remember from hereon in
by TA Salmalin
Summary: Part 5 of 5 of 'history has its eyes on you' series. Ten years later, it's time to repay an old debt.
1. Chapter 1

"Nii-san! Nii-san!"

There's a tornado going through the hospital, forcing staff to press up against the walls and upsetting innocent potted plants. It splits at the end of the hall, resolving into two boys, one blond, one dark-haired. They collide with two medics who have long since braced themselves.

"Hello, Naruto."

"Hello, Sasuke."

Kakashi and Itachi exchange indulgent smiles over their little brothers' heads.

"What have I told you about running in the hospital?" Itachi says.

"But I missed you," Sasuke whines.

"Me too!" Naruto shouts, not to be outdone. "I missed you both! And so did Sasuke, because Kakashi-nii-san is the best!"

"Is not!"

"Is too!"

"Is _not_!"

The trainee supervisor pokes his head out of his office, spots the source of the commotion, and rolls his eyes. "Uchiha, go home. Your shift's almost over anyway. Hatake, you're not even supposed to be here."

"Just helping my precious kohai, here," Kakashi says, ruffling Itachi's hair.

Itachi glares at him, mildly, like a kitten with a wet nose, which is why Kakashi hangs around pestering him at every opportunity.

The supervisor huffs. "Right. Get lost, both of you. Some of us are trying to work."

Itachi tries to apologize, but Sasuke and Naruto drag him away, out into the warm spring day.

Kakashi follows them, hands in his pockets, whistling. Pointing Itachi out to Orochimaru had been one of his better ideas. He'd heard from sensei that his graduation record was being challenged, and really shouldn't have been as surprised as he was when he went to investigate and found a very young and very tiny Uchiha Itachi.

He might possibly have overreacted.

He yelled at the Academy sensei, he yelled at the school board, and he yelled at his own sensei, who had no idea what he was going on. He would have yelled at Fugaku, too, but Mikoto unexpectedly took his side and handled that for him. Leaving him free to yell at other people. Specifically Orochimaru.

"Do you even know this boy?" Orochimaru asks, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Maybe," Kakashi says. He did see him in the Academy after all, before he started yelling at everyone.

Orochimaru glares at him, like he knows exactly what he's thinking.

Time for his trump card. "I have a bad feeling."

Itachi is not allowed to graduate early.

Fugaku is livid, and tries to make Kakashi's life difficult for a while, but he's embarrassingly inept at it. What can he say that hasn't already been said? What can he do to one of Konoha's most successful young medical ninja?

But it bothers sensei, so Kakashi sics Naruto on him.

Definitely another one of his brilliant ideas, because the ensuing chaos is hilarious, and Kakashi gets a lot of surreptitious thumbs-up for that one.

"This isn't going to be a repeat of the Hyuuga Incident, is it?" sensei asks, when Kakashi and Naruto are both called onto the carpet for a scolding.

"No," Kakashi says virtuously.

But he doesn't want to get Naruto in trouble—not that Naruto particularly minds, and anyway Kushina high-fived them both behind sensei's back—but it's the principle of the thing, so he tries another avenue.

"Get out of my office," Orochimaru says.

"I think you should visit the Academy," Kakashi says.

"No. Did you know that last time someone was actually eating dirt? Never again."

"You should see Itachi," Kakashi says. Maybe he's a tiny bit motivated by the lingering need to check that Orochimaru isn't secretly going evil again, but mostly he just wants to annoy Fugaku, and maybe help Itachi a little.

Orochimaru pushes his glasses back. "I thought you said he was dangerous."

"I said he shouldn't be allowed to graduate early. It's unhealthy. Look at me. Look at Anko."

Orochimaru frowns thoughtfully. "Those are two very good points, which is why he wasn't allowed to graduate. I still don't see why I have to be further involved."

"But he has such excellent chakra control," Kakashi wheedles.

Orochimaru understands right away. "The Uchiha clan traditionally doesn't think much of medics."

Idiots, Kakashi thinks. "Idiots," he says.

"Quite." Orochimaru with his glasses. "Very well, I suppose it's about time those little miscreants were reminded what being a ninja is all about. But indoors, this time."

Orochimaru is impressed by Itachi, of course—who wouldn't be?—and it is not without a certain sense of irony that Kakashi helps smooth the way for Itachi to be taken on as Orochimaru's student when he graduates (at ten).

Even though Orochimaru isn't a medic himself, he gets all the credit for training Kakashi, and Fugaku is the only one surprised when Itachi also chooses a medical track.

The Uchiha clan is honored by such a prestigious placement, Itachi finds a way to be both a ninja and a pacifist, and Kakashi gets to annoy Fugaku. Everybody wins.

Kakashi watches Naruto and Sasuke pestering Itachi for attention, sweets, training, whatever it is, and his slight smile is fond, no trace of doubt or ambivalence.

He'd worried many times, over the years, if his third first meeting with Sasuke was going to be another round of barely-repressed anger and emotional upheaval.

Worried needlessly, as it turned out.

He was walking Itachi back to the Uchiha compound, sometime in Itachi's first week at the hospital when Kakashi was rather ineptly trying to be friendly, when it happened. Sasuke came running out to greet them—well, greet Itachi really—and Itachi knelt down to swing him onto his back.

Sasuke grinned at them both, showing off his missing front teeth, and babbled cheerfully about his day and got a lollipop stuck in Itachi's hair.

It was so far from any of Kakashi's memories of Sasuke that they might as well not even be the same person.

The very next day, he brought Naruto with him to pick Itachi up.

"I really do know where the hospital is," Itachi says, slightly muffled because Sasuke is clinging to his face.

"Hey, hey," Naruto says. "I'm Naruto, want to play?"

"Of course you do," Kakashi says, smiling pleasantly. "But we share a sensei now, and it wasn't so long ago that I finished the trainee program myself. It's my responsibility to look after you."

"Itachi-nii-san and me are playing," Sasuke says. "Together. Without you."

Itachi sighs. "That really isn't necessary."

"Well, Kakashi-nii-san is the best ninja in the whole village, so he doesn't have time to play with me right now because he's too _busy_ ," Naruto says.

Kakashi's smile broadens. "It is my honor, kohai."

Sasuke's head pops up. "No way, Itachi-nii-san is the best! He could beat anyone in the village in five minutes!"

"…right," Itachi says. "Thank you."

"Oh yeah? Well, Kakashi-nii-san could beat them in five _seconds_! Even the Hokage!"

"Could not!"

"Could too!"

Kakashi smiles fondly at Naruto, who is bright red in the face and waving his fists at Sasuke. He catches Itachi with the same smile, watching Sasuke's chibi, gap-toothed version of Fugaku's scowl.

It's a better source of rivalry than their childhood trauma, at any rate.

They do end up getting into a scuffle, and Naruto proudly tells everyone in the village that Sasuke knocked out one of his baby teeth, and they're fast friends from that day on.

Kakashi is starting to fall behind the others, but since that means Itachi is the one getting climbed over, he isn't too eager to fix that.

"Oh, Kakashi!"

He stops and waves a little, before putting his hand safely back in his pocket. "Rin. Baby."

She smiles indulgently. "He has a name, you know."

"Hmm," Kakashi says. He watches the baby from a safe distance. It isn't that he's afraid of babies, it's just that he has a healthy respect for how fragile they are.

"I'll be back to work in a few weeks," she says. "I hope you and Itachi haven't burned the place down by then."

"Still standing," Kakashi assures her. "Itachi is disturbingly responsible."

"Well, one of you has to be."

"It's not healthy, that much responsibility. He's lucky to have me."

"I'm sure."

The baby starts to cry, and Kakashi remembers that he has an urgent need to be elsewhere. "Well, you know, nice to see you. Time to do… things."

She huffs a laugh. "I swear, you're worse than Obito, and he's actually famous for his klutziness. You don't need to run away from the baby."

"But… things," Kakashi says, and slinks away.

He's lost the other three in the barely-contained chaos of the midweek marketplace, but that's fine. They'll eventually find their way to the Uchiha compound, or the house, or convince Itachi to take them somewhere to play.

Itachi falls for this every time. Kakashi is filled with the warm glow of a job well done.

Since he's here, he considers buying a vegetable, as evidence that he's a competent adult now, but then he might have to eat it.

Best not to risk it.

* * *

Kakashi kicks off his shoes, dropping them on top of someone else's in defiance of the space carefully left for him. "Sensei?"

There's a thump, the crash of something that's probably broken now, and the patter of small feet.

"Ka!"

He obligingly holds still as Mito makes her unsteady way across the hall.

He has to rush to catch her when she collides with his shins and almost bounces off, but she's really getting much better at that, even just since yesterday.

"Ka!" she announces again, triumphantly.

"Yes, hello," he says. "Still not your mother."

Sensei appears around the corner, wearing that same pink apron he's had for years now, lovingly patched over with whatever was handy and orange by Naruto. "You're late."

"Eh," he says. "I was waylaid by roving bandits."

"I'll take that to mean that you've left poor Itachi with Naruto and Sasuke again. I'll be sure to set an extra place for him."

"And I'm not late until dinner is on the table," Kakashi adds. He tries to move further into the house, but Mito is clinging to his leg. "We're not doing this again."

She dimples, showing off her somewhat erratically placed teeth.

He sighs, channels just a little chakra, just in case, and stomps into the house with her still hanging off him, shrieking with delight.

"Stop looking at me like that," Kakashi says.

Sensei doesn't even bother to try and rein in his soppy look. "You're so good with her."

Kakashi is not, by any stretch, good with children.

By the time Naruto was born, he had mostly managed to contain his fears that he would be replaced with the next model, but that had not at all prepared him from the squalling, smelly reality of a new person.

Sensei had probably never been happier, fussing over Naruto, fussing over Kushina, and fussing over Kakashi when he held still long enough to get ambushed. He was a natural at being a father, of course, relentlessly cheerful even when Naruto puked on him (which was often), and peed on him (that was only once), and kept the whole building up with his wailing (that was all the time).

Kakashi retreated to a safe distance, mostly doing odd chores and fetching things for Kushina, who was bedridden for a few weeks.

It wasn't even any of Kakashi's business, not really, but he couldn't help his incredulous amusement as everyone from the Hokage's wife on down tried to convince him that pregnancy can be complicated (which won't ever affect him so he doesn't care), and sometimes babies are late (he's not so ignorant as to think that a ten-month pregnancy is normal), and it's normal, new father paranoia to take Kushina out to an isolated cabin and cover her with seals during delivery (do they think he's stupid?).

Kakashi was actually there for the delivery, much as he'd rather forget it, because he's an excellent medic and an excellent sealmaster and that's a very specialized niche.

It becomes ridiculous, after a while, the lengths they go to avoid telling him that Kushina is a Jinchuuriki.

His personal favorite is when sensei tried to explain why they named their daughter after the Shodaime's wife.

"They're part of the same clan," sensei says.

"She wants to have a tie to her home village," sensei says.

"It's part of her campaign to be Hokage," sensei says.

Kakashi just rolls his eyes. He rather thinks sensei lost the argument when Kakashi got promoted to jounin after the successful delivery. There's no way that's normal.

Sensei must know that he knows about Kushina. None of this would have been necessary if not for the Sandaime's determination to make life as difficult as possible for his successor. Not only did he forbid anyone from talking about the Kyuubi, ever, but he wrote a whole bunch of reforms of the police force without consulting Fugaku, and then fired the entire Elder Council.

The Yondaime did not have a good first week.

Kakashi and Mito arrive in the spacious dining room, where Kushina is sneaking bites of frosting while something burns in the kitchen.

"Aahh!" sensei cries, sprinting past them to try and rescue whatever it is.

"He knows you bought out Ichiraku's, right?" Kakashi asks, claiming his favorite chair. Time to begin the process of transferring Mito from his foot to his lap. It should have its own procedural manual.

"You know how he is," Kushina says. "He gets more excited about Naruto's birthday than Naruto does."

That's true, and considering how excitable Naruto is, also terrifying. "But Mito isn't even old enough to know it's her birthday."

"And you think that matters to him because…?"

A valid point. "Happy birthday," Kakashi tells the baby, helping himself to some frosting.

Mito doesn't stop gnawing on his knee.

"I saw that!" sensei hollers from the kitchen.

"Saw what?" Kakashi calls back.

"I'm thinking about moving," Kushina says.

Kakashi stops eating the frosting. "What?"

"It's not that I don't love this house…"

He coughs. When the Sandaime decided he and his wife wanted to down-size, he offered sensei and Kushina the official Hokage residence.

It was the first time she stopped complaining every time she saw him at being left out of the debate over who got to be the Yondaime Hokage. Nevermind that she was on a mission; she's convinced he timed it that way on purpose.

Privately, so is Kakashi.

But it's looking very much like she'll be the Godaime Hokage, so here they all are.

"…but I think Minato is taking the number of rooms as some kind of personal challenge."

Kakashi considers the size of the Hokage residence. It's an alarming thought.

"Or _you_ could have some children," she says.

"Absolutely not."

She sighs. "But you're so good with them."

Where do people keep getting this idea?

"No."

"I'll keep working on Gai."

Kakashi sighs.

* * *

It's kind of a long story, how Gai ended up at the Hokage residence with them. Kakashi still isn't quite sure how it happened, and he lived through it.

He supposes it started when Dai met a woman. Romantically. Obviously he'd met women before then.

Gai's mom died when he was fairly young, and he has some memories of her but doesn't like to talk about her. That's fine; Kakashi doesn't push. He doesn't talk about his parents, either.

Kakashi and Gai had been chuunin for a few years by then, and when Dai sprung the news, and obliquely (for him) hinted that he was considering moving in with the woman, but it was a small place, well, Gai was eighteen and offered to find a place of his own.

It was only natural that Kakashi should look with him. They spent all their time that Kakashi wasn't at the hospital and Gai wasn't on missions in each other's company, and it wasn't totally unheard of for them to drop in on each other even then. Also, of the two of them, Kakashi had more experience with apartment hunting. He knew to ask about things like whether you could paint the walls orange.

And it's not a complete surprise, when people assume that by looking for apartments together they're 'looking for apartments together.' After all, they've been assumed to be a couple since before Kakashi was even legal, and sensei and Kushina accidentally moved in together so that's a thing that happens. Neither of them are overly concerned with what other people think, so it doesn't bother them.

How they get from apartment hunting to Gai moving in with Kakashi, that's a little less clear.

Gai is a fearsome shinobi and a wonderful friend, but when it comes to money management, well… Kakashi can say, unequivocally, that Gai is not the worst he's ever met.

But only because he's met Tsunade.

Gai is determined that he doesn't want any help, that he can do this on his own, so everywhere they look is basically a dive. He seriously considers one place with only half a roof, but Kakashi talks him out of it.

They don't want to disrupt Dai's plans for a wedding, because Gai wants to show his father that he supports him one hundred percent and is in no way upset about this turn of events. So when the big day comes and Gai still doesn't have an apartment, they just quietly forget to mention it and Gai's stuff migrates over to Kakashi's place.

Kakashi's in the Hokage residence by that time, so it's not like there isn't room. He has some kind of semi-private suite, with three bedrooms, a simple bathroom, and a tiny kitchenette all to himself, so it's not like he doesn't have the space, even with his seven dogs.

And… then Gai doesn't move out. He has a number of back to back missions, and he decides to support some new project at the Academy and suddenly has no money again, and it just seems like a lot of unnecessary bother to keep exploring the seedier parts of the Konoha real estate market.

Kakashi finally brings it up with sensei and Kushina, because this is their house after all, and it turns out they, like the rest of Konoha, just assumed that he and Gai were secretly dating this whole time, and were only wondering why it took him this long to tell them.

"I hope you like dogs," Kakashi says when he goes back to his side of the house.

"So they said yes?" Gai asks, fretfully.

"Of course they said yes. I don't know why you were even worried about it."

"It's kind of unexpected."

"Not really."

Kakashi watches Gai putter around the kitchen for a while.

"Are we dating?"

Gai trips over Bisuke.

"Just, you know how I miss things sometimes."

"I would tell you," Gai says earnestly.

"Okay. Well, good."

Kakashi isn't sure what Gai could be doing in there that's so fascinating, since neither of them can cook and there's nothing in their kitchen besides expired takeout, a bowl of melons, and a ton of dog food.

Gai really likes melons for some reason. It's weird.

But Kakashi suspects that, contrary to Gai's claims, he is missing something critical in this conversation.

"So. Will you be bringing people back here?" Kakashi asks finally. He turns that idea over in his mind. He doesn't really like people intruding on his space, but Gai probably won't find anyone too horrible.

"Probably not," Gai says to the sink.

Kakashi _hates_ when Gai is evasive, especially since it happens so rarely.

"What about you?" Gai asks.

"I don't… date," Kakashi says. "It's just being friends, but with a lot of misplaced spit and pointless angst."

Gai coughs a few times, and changes the subject.

Kakashi's sleeping situation his greatly improved over the years, but he's still prone to having nightmares. At first, Gai lets him deal with it himself. After about a week of attempting to be discreet, he makes tea and offers to talk about it. And then falls asleep in Kakashi's room.

It takes Kakashi an embarrassing three weeks to realize that they are sleeping together.

"So," he says, waking up with Gai's arm securely around his waist. "This?"

"Okay with you?" Gai asks sleepily.

"Yeah?"

"Okay."

Sometimes Kakashi is confused by his own life. But if Gai's happy, and he's happy, he's not going to stir up trouble, and the dogs happily go back to sprawling all over Gai's room and the one that is supposed to be for them (and Kakashi's, too; it's amazing how they can take up so much space).

In all the time they've been friends, they've only had one major fight. It went on for weeks, and for a time Kakashi thought they were never going to speak to each other again.

It happened before they moved in together, when Gai was still a young chuunin eager to prove himself and Kakashi and Rin were the shining stars of the Konoha medical unit.

Kakashi wasn't even really paying attention when Gai told him about the exciting new technique his father was teaching him, and how he hopes to apply for the jounin exams in a few years. The medic in charge of the trainees was convinced that Kakashi had reached stardom through favoritism, and determined to prove it before Kakashi got someone killed on the operating table.

Meaning he had to do a lot of extra work, and somehow always got assigned the most tedious jobs.

"I'm up to two gates already," Gai had said.

That time, Kakashi was listening.

And then he totally flipped his shit.

He was not proud of himself, then or after. Sensei had to mediate, with Kushina and Dai representing their errant teenagers, because they refused to be in the same room as each other. Kakashi didn't believe in his friend. Gai was too reckless. Kakashi wanted all the attention. Gai was throwing his life away.

Around and around it went.

Finally, Kakashi did what he should have done in the first place. He sneaks into Gai's apartment, gets a black eye for his efforts, and tells him a story not very well-disguised as a nightmare that happened to someone else. About a boy whose father killed himself, because he thought a legacy was all he or his son had to offer. About a man whose friend gave his life for him because he thought the other's was worth more.

"At the heart of it, it's a suicide jutsu," Kakashi said. "It… it's not fair of me to try and dictate your decisions about your life and your career. I'll stop. But… I don't know if I can still be your friend, knowing that one day you might choose not to come back. It's selfish, I know, I just…"

Gai saved him from having to continue that excruciating conversation by tackle-hugging him. They break a table. They both cry.

And Gai declares that he's going to make jounin using his own power, and the matter of the Eight Gates is dropped.

He still makes it, of course.

* * *

"I want to be jounin-sensei," Gai says.

"Okay," Kakashi says. "I'm sure you'll be great at it."

Gai looks at him. "You don't think I'm too young? Too new at being a jounin?"

"No."

"Well, okay then. I'm submitting my application today."

Kakashi writes him a letter of recommendation.

A few days later, the Hokage calls him to his office.

"This is hardly professional," Orochimaru says, waving the letter.

"Those are supposed to be confidential," Kakashi says.

"Not from me." Orochimaru crosses his arms, burying them in the long sleeves of the Hokage robe of office, and glares at his former student.

The ANBU guards try very, very hard to be invisible, except one. She winks.

"I thought I made several good points," Kakashi says.

"You wrote that he had me as a jounin-sensei and turned out fine, and that we couldn't possibly do worse."

Said ANBU starts snickering.

"Yes, that's what I meant."

Orochimaru huffs.

"You already know what he's like," Kakashi says. "You taught him."

"Yes. I know." Orochimaru says this with great feeling, none of it positive.

"He's great with kids. He's dedicated to his work and inspires dedication in others. Besides, Kushina voted for him."

"Now that _is_ supposed to be confidential."

"She didn't tell me, I guessed."

Orochimaru pinches the bridge of his nose. "How did I end up with such a disrespectful student?"

"You have Itachi?" Kakashi offers.

"Just get out of here. And tell that woman that she had better buckle down and learn that history she's dodging or I'm giving the Hat to someone else."

Kakashi gets out of there, and is unsurprised when he is joined by the snickering, winking ANBU.

"You should drop by more often," Anko says. "Even I can't irritate him like you do."

Anko is as dedicated as Gai, in her own way. It's just that the thing she's dedicated to is finding new and exciting ways of poisoning people. She does well as Orochimaru's bodyguard, because he considers the occasional poisoning attempt a good way to keep alert, and a sign that it's time for her to go on a mission.

She fits right in with ANBU.

"I'll consider it," Kakashi says.

"Great; I have a few cool new ideas."

He's considered it, and he's staying far away from the Hokage Tower for a while.

* * *

No matter how busy he is, Kakashi tries to visit the Hyuuga compound at least once a day. It only took three weeks of persistent nagging and not-so-subtle reminders that he's the former student of the Hokage before the guards stopped bothering trying to keep him out.

He wants to keep being allowed in, so he avoids the clan elders and tries to behave himself.

"Ah, I was wondering when you would stop by," Hizashi says. "I should have known it would be snack time."

"Pure coincidence," Kakashi says.

"Uh huh."

Hizashi's wife waves to them as they go by, but doesn't stop washing dishes. She's quintessential Hyuuga branch family, traditional and quiet, and Kakashi doesn't really understand what Hizashi sees in her, but she isn't Kakashi's wife, so, he doesn't have to.

Hizashi settled down a lot after he passed the chuunin exams. He made a sort of peace with his twin, and was thinking about trying for jounin when Neji was born.

Now that Neji has started at the Academy, he's thinking about it again.

"I think Gai still has some of his books lying around the house," Kakashi says. "I'm sure he wouldn't mind you borrowing them."

"Thank you," Hizashi says, inclining his head.

Neji is out on the veranda, eating slices of fruit over an open textbook.

He quickly shoves it under the bench when he sees his father coming.

Hizashi sighs, and Kakashi suppresses a smirk.

"We have a guest," Hizashi says. "And not just one, I see."

Hinata waves at them shyly.

Neji inclines his head, exactly like his father does, and waves them to a seat, pushing the little tray of fruit closer to the middle of the table.

"Neji, Hinata," Kakashi says. "No cookies today?"

"I'm training to be a ninja now," Neji says. "I have to eat healthy."

Hinata slips him a cookie under the table.

"Learn anything interesting today?" Kakashi asks.

Since Neji thinks everything is interesting, that's all it takes to have him off and running, describing in detail everything he did at the Academy today, with references to the rest of the week where appropriate.

Kakashi interrupts only to ask questions, winking at Hinata when she hesitates to be the one interrupting. She's starting at the Academy next year, and hangs on Neji's every word.

Neji isn't an unhappy child, this time around, but he's quiet and studious. He and Naruto met only once, and immediately took mutual vows of eternal loathing.

Kakashi was a little alarmed, Kushina is optimistic that they'll grow out of it.

They're just very different people. Naruto delights in being as disruptive as possible, and the only thing even close to misbehavior that Neji indulges in is tolerating Kakashi's visits. Kakashi is still a bit of a persona non grata around here.

You drop water on the clan heir one time…

But Neji greatly admires his father, who likes Kakashi, sort of, and Kakashi is an endless fount of knowledge about the shinobi arts, which is Neji's sole obsession.

"I had a question…" Neji ventures, moving to take his textbook out again.

"Not while you're eating," Hizashi says.

Neji considers this, then stuffs four pieces of melon in his mouth at once. He pushes the rest towards Hinata and takes out his book.

Hizashi sighs.

* * *

"I have a mission for you," Orochimaru says.

Finally.

"I don't know why you're pushing so hard for this. In all the time you've been a chuunin, you've never once challenged your restriction to the village."

"Unofficial restriction."

"When it's my report, and I'm the Hokage, it's an official restriction."

Okay, point.

"I haven't forgotten how to fight, Orochimaru-sensei," Kakashi says. "I mean, Hokage-sama."

Orochimaru steeples his fingers together. "That's not the issue, and you know it. There is no evidence whatsoever that you won't freeze up on this mission the way you did as a genin."

Well. Ouch. "But you still granted my request," Kakashi says.

Orochimaru sighs. "You are very persistent. The Missions Office tells me that this is the four-year anniversary of your weekly mission requests. At this point, I am adequately convinced that you aren't going to explain and you aren't going to stop."

"Am I unqualified for the mission?" Kakashi asks.

Orochimaru crosses his arms and glares at Kakashi from under his hat. "We both know there isn't any mission that you aren't qualified for. _If_ you can hold yourself together. There are S-rank ANBU assassinations that I would consider you for, if you were so inclined."

He so, so isn't.

Orochimaru sighs. "At some point, I will learn your secret. Here's your assignment. Don't mess it up."


	2. Chapter 2

Warnings: Gaara. References to Gaara's traumatic childhood, some non-explicit violence, minor character deaths.

* * *

Suna is hot. And dry. And also hot.

Did he mention that it was hot?

Kakashi can't wait to get out of here.

He's working undercover, selling some kind of hot pastry at a stand arranged by T&I, and he's not making much of a profit, because who would want to eat hot food in the desert?

Unlike what you might expect from T&I, there are no sharp objects or suspicious implements. Just pastries. It's a routine information-gathering assignment, notable only because they have a treaty with Suna and aren't supposed to be spying on each other.

As if Suna isn't doing the exact same thing.

Kakashi has his hair dyed bright blue, because any shinobi worth anything would notice it was dyed, and it would only look more suspicious if it was a bland, boring brown.

And he can't exactly wander around Sunagakure looking like himself.

He wears the standard desert gear, which covers the lower half of his face, not without a certain sense of irony.

It's an easy job, usually reserved for trainees in the interrogation department who are being considered for much riskier undercover roles. But he's perfectly qualified, and there may have been a slight element of favoritism, so here he is.

He does everything he's supposed to, chatting with other vendors, with low-level shinobi who don't know any better, people on the street. He dutifully takes notes in a special T&I code and conceals them in the pastries he ships out (that has to be Inoichi's idea, he's always been a strange one).

That still leaves plenty of time for his real mission: Gaara-watching.

It's been four years since he first started to subtly try and find a way to get to Suna. Naruto is deliriously happy, ditto Sasuke, and Neji is serenely content or whatever the Hyuuga equivalent is. Kakashi decided it would be less stalkerish to introduce the boys to Sakura once they were all at the Academy together, but as far as he can tell she is also growing up happy and well-adjusted.

Gaara, the son of the Kazekage, is slightly more of a challenge.

But Kakashi's here now, and the boy can't be more than five or six, so he can't be too miserable yet.

Hopefully.

Kakashi at six was perfectly miserable, but what are the chances that an imperfectly-sealed Jinchuuriki carrying the entire future of his village on his shoulders would have a difficult early childhood?

He should have tried harder to get here sooner.

Even the most delicate of hints about Gaara get him strange or frightened looks, so he has to abandon the straightforward path fairly quickly. Which is fine, it's not really his style, anyway.

He's constructing a model of the Kazekage Tower out of pastry dough when Gaara just happens along the road in front of his stand.

He has the same blood-red hair that Kakashi remembers, but it's the way the crowd parts, pressing themselves against the buildings and whimpering, that really clues him in.

These are the sorts of subtle clues you pick up on as an elite jounin.

Gaara's eyes are two dark hollows in his head, and Kakashi thinks he remembers future-Gaara saying something about how the Shukaku prevented him from sleeping.

The guy next to him, who sells an iced drink and does much better than Kakashi does, ducks behind his cart and motions for Kakashi to do the same.

"It's the demon," he mouths, trying to squeeze his bulk into the gap between the wheel and the precious icebox.

This is not a promising start.

* * *

Kakashi can't risk drawing attention to himself, so he starts hanging around his stand at weird hours, getting a reputation as a bit of an eccentric. That kind of attention is fine. He's supposed to be a pastry chef, who are eccentric by definition. Maybe Gaara will just happen by again when the street is less crowded.

He's also working on a backup plan that involves breaking into the Kazekage Tower, but he's hoping not to have to resort to that. It's a special kind of paranoia that forces your village leader to live and work in the same place.

But he's lucky, or maybe Gaara is just really bored, because he sees him again three days later.

It's ridiculously hot, even for Suna, and even the iced drink guy has packed up and gone looking for shadier pastures. It's just Kakashi and a few kids, who are running around playing some sort of ball game.

How can they be running?

They've set a net up at the base of one of the lower walls, and the object seems to be to kick the ball as hard as they can into the net.

As Kakashi could have predicted, this ends with the ball being stuck on the roof.

The kids complain for a bit, which is illogical. Kakashi has never played ball in his life, and he still knew exactly what was going to happen.

Except, then there's a very localized sandstorm, and the ball dislodges itself and starts floating to the ground.

The kids, and Kakashi, turn slowly.

And there is Gaara, little face pinched in concentration as he brings the ball right into his arms.

He looks very different without the kanji on his forehead, and with chubby baby cheeks.

He manages a surprisingly sweet smile, and holds the ball out to the kids. "Here you go. Can I play?"

They turn and run.

Gaara's smile turns down, and his eyes narrow hatefully. The air is suddenly thick with malevolence.

The ball goes flying at the kids' backs, along with some very business-like coils of sand.

"Whoa, hey!" Kakashi says.

He starts to step in the middle, remembers what a terrible idea that would be, and pushes his cart into the sand instead.

Now, he's seen Gaara form aerial pathways with his sand with enough swiftness and accuracy to match the pace of two different people at the same time. He knows how delicate and precise he can be.

But right now he just wants to lash out at something.

The cart explodes, and Kakashi has to duck civilian-slow, so he gets sliced up by the debris. Nothing serious, according to his quick self-assessment, but he's not happy about how close that one piece got to his eye.

And this could be difficult to explain to Inoichi.

He's aware of a presence, and forces himself to shake his head as if to clear it, to touch the largest gash, the one on his right arm, and whimper. Then he lets himself look around, and visibly startles when there's a Suna jounin not three feet away from him.

Part of the medical corp, if he's not mistaken.

"Are you alright?" the man asks.

How do civilians react to injury? "I'm bleeding," Kakashi says, trying to sound panicky.

"Don't worry, I'm a medic," the man says.

Called it.

Gaara seems to have calmed down a bit, and has taken notice of the remains of Kakashi's cart, crushing them further.

"Do you live around here?" the man asks.

"Not really," Kakashi says. "I was just turning the dough. The sunlight gives it flavor."

The man looks at him like he's a nutcase, but not like he suspects that he's an enemy infiltrator.

"I didn't know I shouldn't be out here," Kakashi says, trying to show the proper deference towards a shinobi. The few civilians he encounters personally usually run away. Belatedly, he whimpers again.

"It's fine," the man says, giving Gaara a sideways look. It's not… it's not angry, or hateful, more exasperated.

If Kakashi were really a civilian caught in the crossfire, he might be offended. Of course, then he wouldn't have gotten involved. As is, he's grateful that at least one person in Gaara's life didn't treat him like shit.

"I can take you back to my office and patch you up," the man offers. "It's closer than the hospital, anyway. If you want."

Also, then this incident might go unreported.

"I heard you shinobi can work magic," Kakashi says.

The man laughs. "Just about."

The laughter finally seems to break Gaara out of whatever daze he was in, and he wanders over.

The Suna ninja looks tense, but doesn't stop him.

"You're hurt," Gaara says. "You're bleeding."

"My cart kind of… disintegrated," Kakashi says.

"You'll be compensated for that," the man says quickly.

"I'm sorry," Gaara says, all big eyes and sad mouth.

"It's not so bad," Kakashi says, even though he probably should have stayed mad for longer.

Gaara takes his hand, and licks at the cut there.

Kakashi doesn't have to fake his surprise at that. That's kind of weird.

He considers introducing Gaara to Anko, then realizes what a terrible idea that is.

The Suna ninja pulls Gaara back. "Uh, how would you like me to show you how to wrap that?"

"Okay!" Gaara says, licking the blood off the corner of his mouth.

Well. Huh.

"I'm a senior jounin with the medical corp," the man says, a little defensively, though of himself or Gaara, it's impossible to tell. "My name's Yashamaru."

Kakashi composes his face into what he hopes is an appropriate mix of fear and awe. "It's an honor to meet you, Jounin Yashamaru. I can just go to the hospital, it's no trouble."

"Don't worry, I'll have you fixed up in no time."

"I'll help!" Gaara says.

"Okay," Kakashi says. "If you insist."

He spins them his cover story, not that Yashamaru particularly cares. Like most medics, he's not overly concerned with social graces.

Gaara is spectacularly unhelpful in the most adorable way possible. He spills a bottle of disinfectant, somehow gets himself tangled up in the bandages and shreds them with his sand trying to get out, and is finally mostly-occupied with putting sunscreen in Kakashi's scratches.

It stings, but he can live with it.

Yashamaru seems to visibly relax the longer Kakashi doesn't freak out about Gaara.

"You must be new here," he says eventually.

"Just got in a few weeks ago," Kakashi says easily. "I thought there might be a market for sweets here, but it's too damn hot. Pardon my language. I might have to move on."

"We'll see that you have the best of materials," Yashamaru promises.

Maybe he won't end up having to explain the missing cart to Inoichi after all.

* * *

It's a good thing Kakashi wants to get to know Gaara, because after that he sees him every day.

His future as a pastry chef is not looking too promising, because while he does get a new cart, and they actually don't skimp on the materials too outrageously, his few customers have decided they don't really care about pastries that much.

"What's this?"

"That's the dough. You probably shouldn't eat that. Or go ahead, it's fine."

"What's this?"

"That's the oven, don't put your hand in there, it's… well, okay, I guess that's also fine."

"What's this?"

…and so on.

"This is my bear," Gaara says. "He's called Bear."

"Good," Kakashi says, like a man whose pets came with their own names.

"He can wave." Gaara manipulates his sand so the bear waves at each of them. "But he doesn't say hello."

"Okay," Kakashi says. "Sorry."

"Say hello to me."

"But the bear—"

"No, you."

"Oh. …hello."

Gaara smiles. "Hi!"

This would be extremely cute, if it weren't also extremely sad.

Kakashi may have to call his actual mission here a wash. After a few days of everyone giving his stall a wide berth, and disrupting the normal marketplace traffic, Kakashi finds himself invited to a 'much more upscale venue'.

He suspects that the building across the street is a front for Suna's equivalent of ANBU.

His business does actually pick up, but he doubts Inoichi particularly cares how many pastries he sells.

He spends a lot of the time that he used to spend trying to socialize composing his mission report in his head. 'I don't know what the general populace thinks, but the ANBU have a sweet tooth. I couldn't tell you the general sentiment towards Konoha, but the Kazekage's son seems to like us well enough.'

He is gathering useful information, just not the sort he's actually here for.

Yashamaru also starts hanging around a lot. Kakashi suspects that he is Gaara's minder, in which case it would make sense that he's a medical specialist.

It's a little frustrating because he thinks he could actually like Yashamaru, and they could have a lot of interesting conversations about medical ninjutsu, but of course he can't talk about that.

Eventually, Kakashi hopes that Konoha and Suna will have a more amicable relationship, preferably without the end of the world. He doesn't remember seeing Yashamaru before, but he might have missed him, or perhaps he was killed during Orochimaru's invasion of Konoha.

So mostly he stands around and makes sure Gaara doesn't accidentally kill anyone, and tries to divert him from purposefully killing anyone, and Kakashi pretends not to notice.

He is subtly checked out by what he suspects are the ANBU, and not at all subtly checked out by the Kazekage personally, but his cover story holds. He almost blows it when the Kazekage is a complete ass to his son, mocking his enthusiasm and glaring until his smile melts into something appropriately sober, but Kakashi restrains himself.

He's also visited by Chiyo-baa-sama herself, and burns his hand and generally looks like a complete buffoon in his panic. But he isn't recognized, so it all turns out fine.

He only hears about the incident with the drunk because he's been picking up Suna ANBU hand-signals in his spare time.

Gaara was wandering around late at night, as a sleepless, unsupervised child is prone to do, and was menaced by a drunken idiot. Who was very shortly thereafter a dead drunken idiot.

Kakashi doesn't really see the loss here; what if it had been some other kid, one who isn't virtually invulnerable? But no one asks his opinion, and the Kazekage is livid.

Kakashi has a bad feeling about this.

He's sitting in his tiny, one-room apartment, trying to decide if it's too soon to make a move, and if not, what it would be, when Yashamaru drops through his window.

Kakashi tries to get in a defensive position and tries to act like a surprised civilian and ends up tripping over his own feet. Which, embarrassing, but hopefully convincing.

"I'm not an idiot," Yashamaru says.

But perhaps not.

"You're good at this, very good, but I know another medic when I see one. What are you doing hanging around Gaara?"

Kakashi very much does not want to have to kill this man, the one person he's seen be at all civil to Gaara, but he can't let Konoha be implicated.

Yashamaru lowers a very business-like kunai.

"I've known other Jinchuuriki," Kakashi says.

The kunai stops moving, but Yashamaru doesn't relax. "Go on."

"Generally, their villages treat them like shit. I've never understood that. Even if they really were the mindless destructive machines they're believed to be, why treat them badly? When they want to hurt someone, there you are, and they already hate you. But I've known them personally, and I know Jinchuuriki are just people, people with a terrible burden to bear. One they shouldn't have to bear alone."

Yashamaru studies his face. "I believe you."

Kakashi's breath all comes out in a rush.

"The Kazekage thinks Gaara is out of control."

Shit.

"He has ordered me to kill him."

Double shit.

"He believes that, if Gaara survives, and he can maintain control in the face of such a betrayal, he will have proven himself worthy of being the Sand's Ultimate Weapon."

"What the fuck?" Kakashi asks.

Yashamaru nods. "Exactly. The man is insane. He killed my sister to get his weapon, and now he plans to toss Gaara aside like he isn't his son, like he isn't a human being at all. None of this is Gaara's fault."

"I agree," Kakashi says, "but why are you telling me all of this?"

"Your home, your village, wherever you come from. You said there are Jinchuuriki there?"

"Yes."

"And their lives are better?"

"Yes."

Yashamaru takes a deep breath. "I don't know exactly what you were planning. You never would have succeeded in spiriting Gaara away, the Kazekage values him too much, in all the wrong ways. But I can't protect him any longer. The life that faces him if he survives, is no life at all. I will help you get him out."

Both Kakashi's eyebrows go up. "Really?"

"Yes. You must never tell him the truth, so he—"

"Wait, wait," Kakashi says. He has lived through all the Sasuke drama he ever cares to. "That's crap. Gaara's not an idiot, he knows his father hates him. He thinks you care about him. What good could it possibly do him to hate you trying to protect a man who doesn't deserve it?"

"Well. You think?"

"Yes," Kakashi says. Firmly.

"Well, I suppose that makes sense. Fine. I'm going to attack him tonight. I'll rig an explosion. His sand has grown so strong, I'm sure he'll be fine. I'll tell him to come straight here. You'll have to get him out. Can you do that?"

"Sure, no problem," Kakashi says.

Yashamaru sighs. "This is a terrible idea. I don't even know you. You could be anyone."

"I at least _claim_ to care about Gaara as a human being," Kakashi says.

"That I actually find that comforting is a sign of how truly desperate I am. Know this: I will be watching you from the afterlife, and if you're just fucking around, you'd better hope you live a good, long life, because my sister will kick your ass."

"Understood," Kakashi says.

"Can you at least tell me your name? No, wait, better not. If, by some curse of fate, I survive this mess, I'd rather not be able to give you away."

"Is there no way for you to escape?" Kakashi asks.

"None. The Kazekage knows how I loved my sister, he would never believe it a mere coincidence that Gaara and I disappear on the same day. No, he has to find at least one body. The Shukaku is so odd, they'll excuse the lack of another as just one of its mysteries."

"I'll respect your choice," Kakashi says, very reluctantly. "I'll get Gaara to safety, and see that he has friends, and a happy life."

"That's all I want for him," Yashamaru says. "And maybe, someday, to know his brother and sister. Tell him that his mother's love goes with him, and mine."

"I will," Kakashi promises.

Yashamaru pauses halfway out the window. "Are you sure he would rather know I died protecting him, then think that I betrayed him and my death is of no consequence?"

" _Yes_ ," Kakashi says. "Trust me on this; I'm an expert."

Yashamaru gives him kind of a weird look, but he leaves.

Kakashi just stands there for a moment, taking measured breaths, then he springs into action. He throws together an emergency pack, with anything that could be used as medical supplies, all the food and water he has on hand, and ink and pen.

He casts a complicated genjutsu, and stashes the cart in an abandoned building where it hopefully won't be found quickly. He casts another, even more complicated genjutsu, to convince two of the maybe-ANBU that he left three days ago. It's the best he can do on such short notice. Hopefully Inoichi will be able to use this cover again, if he wants to, or at least Suna won't suspect foul play.

Then he waits.

The moon is high in the sky when he sees the explosion on the roof of the Kazekage Tower, and then it's time to wait some more.

He's just starting to get worried when he senses someone land on the roof of his building, and he's out the window and up top almost as fast as sensei could.

There's Gaara, and he's crying, tears and snot all over his face, and the kanji stands out lividly, obviously a fresh scar.

It's just about the most pathetic thing Kakashi has ever seen.

"Oh, Gaara," he says, dropping to his knees and reaching to touch his shoulder, ignoring the way the sand abrades his skin.

"Why?" Gaara asks, crying like his little heart is broken. "Why did he do it?"

"I'll tell you," Kakashi says. "I promise. But first we must get out of here."

All Gaara has is his bear, blood-spattered and leaking stuffing everywhere, and the clothes he's wearing.

"Everything's going to be alright, now," Kakashi says.

Gaara just continues to cry.

* * *

They get out of Suna without anyone noticing or the Shukaku manifesting, though there are a few anxious moments. Kakashi is growing increasingly concerned by Gaara's apathetic compliance. He's essentially been kidnapped by a stranger, and even though Kakashi does genuinely mean him well, it's unhealthy for Gaara to just go along with it.

Gaara's obviously had a hard life already, even if it hasn't been terribly long.

"I think we should stop here for the day," Kakashi says at length, when he finds a cave that can offer them shelter from the sun. He forces himself not to panic when he steps under the rock outcropping.

Anyway, it's really more of a hollow.

It gets a faint smile on his face, and he ushers Gaara inside and puts a pastry in one hand and a water bottle in the other.

"We'll move out again when it gets dark," Kakashi says. "Are you able to sense if anyone is approaching?"

Gaara shrugs.

"I'll set some traps," Kakashi says, and goes to do that.

When he comes back, Gaara is still sitting in the same place, holding his food and staring at the wall.

"I have answers and a gift for you, Gaara," Kakashi says. "Which would you like first?"

There's no response.

"Answers, then," Kakashi says. He takes a deep breath. "The Kazekage ordered the attack on you. He thinks you're nothing more than a weapon. He's wrong."

Gaara turns his head to look at him.

"Yashamaru loves you, wanted to save you. He distracted the Kazekage so you could get away."

"He… he said that…" Gaara says. He doesn't look like he believes it.

But it's a start.

"You…" Gaara frowns. "Who are you?"

"I'm a Konoha ninja."

Gaara frowns harder.

"I'm from another village."

"Kazekage-sama-" Gaara pauses. Swallows. "You're an enemy."

"Sometimes Suna and Konoha are enemies," Kakashi says. "But right now we're at peace. And the two of us, Kakashi and Gaara, we aren't enemies. I'm here to take you back to my village. You'll have a better life there."

Gaara gives him a deeply skeptical look, one he should be too young for.

"There will be other kids to play with," Kakashi says. "Friends."

He can see that Gaara _wants_ to believe it, but he just can't imagine it.

"You'll see," Kakashi says. He can be patient; Naruto will do all the work for him. All Kakashi has to do is offer Gaara a secure and supportive environment to grow up in—Gai and sensei should have that covered—and help him learn better control over his abilities.

Speaking of…

"You are a Jinchuuriki," Kakashi says.

Gaara just looks confused.

"You are the guardian of one of the bijuu."

Gaara is instantly wary. Maybe he thought Kakashi didn't know?

"That doesn't make you a bad person," Kakashi says. "It is a great responsibility, to protect the rest of the world from a bijuu. You shouldn't have had to do it all by yourself."

Gaara mumbles something that could involve 'Yashamaru'.

"Well, just you and one other person, then. In Konoha, there's another Jinchuuriki, a grown-up, and she'll be able to help you. So will I, and my friend Gai, and my sensei."

"I'm a monster," Gaara says.

"You're not. The demon you protect everyone from, that is not you. You are two totally separate entities. Or you should be. The Kazekage made you into a cage, a prison, and he did a very bad job. That is not your fault, it's his."

Gaara looks like all he got from that is that he is somehow defective.

Kakashi sighs. "Maybe it will make more sense after I show you. I told you I brought you a gift; I will help fix the cage so that Shukaku doesn't bother you so much."

He rolls up his sleeve, exposing the simple tattoo on his forearm. It's a seal, because it isn't safe to leave any of this research just lying around.

Gaara jumps at the puff of smoke, but relaxes again when all that happens is a bunch of paper appears.

Kakashi's obsession with seals had started as an effort to be closer to sensei, to help him develop his Hiraishin faster and maybe learn it himself, so he would be more useful in a fight. It didn't take long to see that one, sensei had it covered, and two, Kakashi was never going to be a match for sensei and he would have to content himself with the two- or three-person Hiraishin he already knew. Or an emergency Yin Seal patch-job.

Then he met Hizashi, and hit on the idea of finding a way to free the Hyuuga. He remembered how much of a burden the curse seal was for Neji. Then sensei caught him, freaked out, and sat him down for a series of extremely long lectures that basically boiled down to having to let people make their own mistakes, especially when they are the second most powerful clan in Konoha.

Kakashi still isn't satisfied with that argument, but he did concede, reluctantly, that he might have to be more subtle. His reverse Caged Bird Seal is ready and waiting for the Hyuuga clan to get its shit together.

He contented himself with medical seals for a long time, and then there was the first—and last, hopefully—time he was involved in delivering a baby, when he realized what a colossal idiot he was. How much trouble did Gaara's imperfect seal cause him? What a pity Kakashi didn't know any sealing experts who could help him!

Idiot.

This seal took him three and a half years to create, one of the reasons it took him so long to get here. But here it is, and here Gaara is, and they're both on their way back to Konoha.

Kakashi gently spreads the thin paper out on the ground, careful not to tear it. He does not want to have to re-draw all of this again.

"Go stand in the middle," he says.

Gaara finally starts to look suspicious. It's a good sign, for all it's currently rather inconvenient at the moment.

"It won't hurt," Kakashi says. "And after, you'll only hurt other people when you want to."

Gaara gives him wide eyes.

"I know there have been accidents, and I know that sometimes you need to protect yourself. This will give you more control."

Gaara clutches his bear a little closer.

"I won't force you. We can't go back to Konoha until you do this, because I don't want anyone to get killed by accident, but we can stay out here in the wilderness as long as you need. Well, not here exactly, we're still too close to Suna, but… in general."

Gaara considers this, and steps into the circle.

Kakashi suspects that the poor kid just assumes things can't get any worse.

Lucky for him, Kakashi is sincere. But this right here, this is exactly why he doesn't understand the prevalent attitude towards Jinchuuriki. The real question isn't how Akatsuki managed to capture so many Jinchuuriki, but why they even had to bother. Most probably would have just walked away from their villages.

Anyway, none of that matters now.

Kakashi presses his hands to the edge of the seal, activating it.

Gaara doesn't look too concerned by the light show; in this time, his sand shield has never been breached, the only strikes that can reach him are emotional ones.

When it finally ends, Gaara sways.

Kakashi rushes to his side. It shouldn't have hurt or damaged him in any way. "Are you alright?"

"I… I…" Gaara says. His eyes flutter shut, his head bows, and he slumps limply over Kakashi's arm.

A few seconds later, there's the sound of adorable, whuffling snores.

"Right." Kakashi says. "I probably should have thought of that."

He gives it 50-50 odds that Gaara will wake up furious and disoriented, but if he attacks, Kakashi will deal with it. He's not concerned about anything less than a full-blown Shukaku manifestation, and he has a few plans for that if it comes down to it.

For now, he'll watch over a little boy's first night's sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

Warnings: Descriptions of depression. Kakashi trying to sort out his relationships and stirring up old memories that could be read as implied dub-con.

* * *

"Let me get this straight," Orochimaru says.

Kakashi stands at perfect attention.

"You had to leave Suna early."

"Yes, sir."

"Because the Kazekage's son was assassinated, and you thought any new arrivals would draw suspicion."

"Yes, sir."

"I see. And you brought a child back with you because?"

Kakashi tries to channel his inner Jiraiya. "Oops?"

Orochimaru pinches the bridge of his nose. "Don't be ridiculous. The child is four. You've been gone three months."

"I'm five," Gaara says. "Almost six."

"So you're claiming that you somehow had an illegitimate child in defiance of all known biological facts, and this boy has nothing to do with Suna's missing Jinchuuriki, or your sudden and inexplicable desire to go to Suna."

"Yes, sir."

"And why do you have a trash bin."

"It's full of sand."

"…why?"

"Sunbathing."

"I did not hear any of this. I know nothing. Get the hell out of my office."

Kakashi gets the hell out.

"And you're not going on any missions ever again!" Orochimaru shouts at his back.

They scoot past the gaping chuunin secretary quickly and out into the street.

"And you thought I was being ridiculous, carrying all that sand around," Kakashi says conversationally.

Gaara has been all big eyes and gaping mouth since they reached the borders of Fire Country. And the forests. When he can manage to stay awake, anyway.

Gaara makes little grabby motions at the bin, and the weight shifts in a way that has nothing to do with gravity.

"Let's just get it back to the house, then you can have the sand," Kakashi says. "We'll work out a way for you to carry it. Or buy something with straps."

Kakashi knows, and Gaara knows, that Gaara could make the sand explode outward at any moment.

But he doesn't, and they make it back to sensei's house without anyone noticing them.

No one else is home, which is unusual, but fortunate.

"Well, here we are," Kakashi says, pushing the door open with his foot.

Three dogs run through the specially-made door—another of Kakashi's seal discoveries of extremely limited usage—and Gaara jumps. The trash bin disintegrates, and Gaara wraps the sand around himself defensively.

Bisuke looks like he's seriously considering going right back home, but nothing really bothers Bull, who trundles placidly along and knocks Kakashi over so he can wash his face.

"Mmrph," Kakashi says.

Pakkun, riding in state on Bull's back, just looks thoughtful. "Who's this?"

"Guys, this is Gaara. He's going to be living with us for a bit. Gaara, this is Bull and Pakkun, and the one hiding over there is Bisuke."

Bisuke sticks his tongue out.

"They won't hurt you," Kakashi says.

Slowly, the sandstorm starts to abate. No surface in the room is untouched.

Kakashi foresees a lot of vacuuming in his future.

"What are they?" Gaara asks.

"They're dogs. Sort of like… like a teddy bear that moves on its own, and talks back."

Pakkun looks mortally offended.

"Really?" Gaara asks, instantly diverted. He rushes up to Bull, who is so big Gaara has to look up into his eyes. "Say hello to me!"

"He doesn't really speak human," Pakkun says. "He can, he's just lazy."

Gaara pouts fiercely. "Then you say hello to me!"

Pakkun rolls his eyes. "Hello."

Gaara beams at him, and strains to reach over Bull's enormous bulk to grab Pakkun.

With a huff of annoyance, and mindful of Kakashi's carefully hidden readiness, Pakkun leaps down and allows his ears to be tugged on. "Great. Naruto all over again."

"Naruto is one of the boys who will play with you," Kakashi says.

Gaara looks like he can't believe this is happening to him.

"Hey," Bisuke says, butting in, "if someone's going to get petted around here, it's me."

Gaara pets all of them, even Bull, and Kakashi starts to relax when all Gaara does is giggle and demand they say hello to him periodically, which is kind of odd but not dangerous. Not like Naruto's tail-pulling phase.

The sand doesn't so much as twitch until Kakashi has relaxed enough to start debating takeout menus and the door opens.

"You're back!" Gai says. He notices Gaara. "Er?"

Gaara is tense and wary, but he's watching Kakashi and the sand isn't doing more than shift agitatedly, so that's a start.

"Uh," Kakashi says. "I have some news."

They eat dinner, and Gaara falls asleep in his noodles and has to be carried to bed.

"This explains why you were cleaning out this room," Gai says. "Kushina said you were nesting and I shouldn't draw attention to it."

Kakashi rolls his eyes, even though Kushina isn't there to appreciate it.

He tells Gai everything, except that he intended to go after the Jinchuuriki all along. The true beauty of Yashamaru's actions is that Kakashi doesn't even have to lie. His report to Orochimaru, the real one away from this afternoon's prying eyes, will simply show that a Suna jounin offered him the Jinchuuriki and he accepted. His only suspect action is being in Suna in the first place.

Once he calms down, Orochimaru's more than clever enough to find a way to spin this in Konoha's favor. And they have plenty of time before anyone from Suna realizes what's happened, again because of Yashamaru's sacrifice.

Gai takes the prospect of hosting a violent, half-feral Jinchuuriki as an exciting challenge, which Kakashi was pretty much counting on.

"So he'll be living with us now?" Gai asks.

That's what Kakashi just said, but something about the phrasing… "Not, like, _living with us_ ," Kakashi says. "Just, until he gets settled. Temporarily."

"Oh," Gai says, looking down. "Until when?"

Kakashi… hesitates. Because he knows more about Gaara and Shukaku than anyone alive today, he's close with the only other Jinchuuriki in Konoha, and he fully expects his younger brother to be Gaara's first and best friend. This gives Gaara a kind of access to all available support systems that no one else could. Well, unless he can convince sensei to adopt him. "Huh," Kakashi says. "I… maybe accidentally adopted him?"

Impossibly, Gai relaxes. "You are always unpredictable," he says, with a warm smile.

Kakashi, on the other hand, is completely freaking out. "I can't have a kid. We can't have a kid. I brought home a kid and I didn't even ask first!"

Gai catches his shoulders and just holds him until the initial panic has passed. "I would say something if I weren't willing to try," Gai says. "And you are great with children."

"I'm really not."

"You're the only one who can't see it."

Kakashi doesn't sense that this is an argument he's going to win. "He's very powerful," he says instead. "The sand obeys his will without any need for handsigns, and Jinchuuriki have vast chakra reserves. Gaara is very dangerous, even by accident. Lightning or a chakra blade will disrupt his control, and water makes the sand heavy and unwieldy, which slows him down a bit, but we'll have to be very careful."

"I'm sure I have a chakra blade somewhere," Gai says cheerfully.

"Speed will also help," Kakashi says. "For a while, anyway."

Once again, Gai moves right on past the mortal danger and fixates on some other issue. "How do you know so much about Jinchuuriki?"

"Oh, er. Kushina is one. But that's supposed to be a secret, so don't tell anyone I told you that."

"Really?" Gai ponders this. "Huh."

And that's that.

* * *

"Why am I the last one to find out you've had a kid?" sensei demands, bursting into the apartment.

There's an explosion of sand, covering Gaara entirely except for two suspicious eyes.

"Um," Kakashi says.

"I'm a grandparent and I didn't even know it!"

Kakashi blushes. "Sensei…"

"You brought this one on yourself," Kushina says from the doorway.

She and Gaara make eye contact, and one of her eyebrows climbs to her hairline.

"You can call me Minato-jiisan," sensei says, sprawling on the floor next to a wide-eyed Gaara. He doesn't even seem to notice the sand.

"Sensei, you are thirty years old," Kakashi says, sighing.

"Thirty-two!"

Kakashi looks at Kushina.

"He'll be thirty-one in a week," she says. "But ask yourself, is it worth arguing over?"

It's not.

"So," Kushina says. "It's funny, but I heard Sand's Jinchuuriki died under mysterious circumstances."

"Huh, imagine that."

They look at each other.

"Minato thought you were such an obedient child," she says. "I have no idea how you did that."

"I was an obedient child!"

"You only _looked_ like you were obedient, because most of the time you were told to do things you intended to do anyway."

Well… okay. That's fair.

"I assume this is why you haven't been round to introduce him yet."

"Sand didn't treat him very well, and we're still working through a few… rough patches. It's better that he's surrounded by jounin, for now."

"You don't need to explain to me," Kushina says, with old bitterness.

Sensei is trying to convince Gaara to make a sandcastle, and Gaara looks like he's trying to determine what language this strange being is speaking.

"Stop that," Kushina says. "You look as soppy as Minato."

Kakashi shrugs.

* * *

"In Konoha we take baths," Kakashi says. "Every day."

"No."

"The water is very pleasant."

"It's very _wet_."

"It's important for you to be clean."

"No."

Kakashi sighs.

A few hours later, sensei comes by with leftovers from dinner. They talked about it, and decided to wait a couple of weeks before introducing Naruto the Human Tornado to Gaara, but sensei is convinced they'll starve in the meantime.

"By the way," he says, "what happened to the downstairs bathroom?"

Kakashi seizes the bowl. "I don't want to talk about it."

* * *

Kakashi and Gai rearrange their schedules so someone is always available to stay with Gaara.

"It's not that I don't know that you can take care of yourself," Kakashi says carefully. "It's just that I don't want you to be bored."

Sensei laughs himself silly about it, something about payback that doesn't even make any sense, but he's very helpful those few times Gai and Kakashi are both busy, so Kakashi doesn't make an issue of it.

It does cut into his free time pretty significantly, and he only realizes that he hasn't been by the Hyuuga compound since he got back when Neji turns up at the hospital, fortunately not as a patient.

"What's this?" Kakashi asks.

"He was asking for you at the front desk," Rin says. "I said I'd show him where your office is."

"Thanks," Kakashi says. He waits until the door closes. "Are you hurt? What's the matter?"

Neji bites his lip. "Otousan is having a bad day."

Ah.

"I still have another hour left of my shift," Kakashi says. "But you're welcome to hang out here if you like. I might have something lying around that you won't find incredibly boring."

He rifles through medical textbooks and squeaky toys, finally coming up with a basic treatise on fire jutsu. Why does he even have that?

Most six and a half year olds would have found that as boring as the textbooks, but Neji is happy enough to accept a lollipop and page through it.

Kakashi rushes through his paperwork and summarizes his research notes, and because Rin is an understanding person and a great friend, she turns up and offers to cover his last half hour.

"Thank you," he says, handing off the charts.

"You were incredibly generous when Ashiya was born, it's the least I can do," she assures him.

Neji neatly puts his book away—in the wrong spot, but the thought is there—and trails after Kakashi out of the building, down the street, and back to the Hyuuga compound.

Hizashi's door opens before he can even knock.

"Oh, Neji, there you are!" his mother says. She looks up at Kakashi. "I hoped he was with you."

"Sorry," Kakashi says. "I would have had him back sooner, but I was still at the hospital."

"No, of course, it's fine. And he takes himself to school and back every morning, so it's not like he doesn't know his way around the village. I just wish he had told me." That last is clearly directed at Neji.

"You said to go to my room," Neji says, unapologetic. "Which I did. And then I went to the hospital."

She sighs. "Well, you're safe, so it's fine."

Neji looks at his feet.

She sighs again. "If you wouldn't mind…"

"Of course," Kakashi says.

Kakashi knows his way around the small apartment allotted to Hizashi and his family. He wonders sometimes if it was a good idea to encourage him, because Hizashi is prone to fighting with the main house and getting himself in trouble. Which is understandable, except they are always quick to put him back in his place, and Hizashi is prone to long episodes of depression after these incidents.

Such as now.

Kakashi knocks, then eases the door open without waiting for a response. Hizashi is sitting on his bed, half-wearing a sleeping yukata and staring out the window through a curtain of unwashed hair.

A bad episode, then.

"Hey," Kakashi says.

"I told Neji not to get you," Hizashi says.

"I wanted to come," Kakashi says.

"He's meant for so much more, that boy."

Kakashi shrugs uncomfortably. "He's doing well at school. He's loved. He's happy."

Hizashi lifts one shoulder in a half-shrug.

"I think there's dinner," Kakashi says. "Or a meal, anyway. Would you like some?"

No response.

"I could bring you something."

Still nothing.

"Well, okay. I'll come by again later," Kakashi says. These non-conversations can go on for hours, and Hizashi tends to get upset afterwards about Kakashi wasting his time, so he tries to make short, frequent visits rather than longer ones.

"Wait," Hizashi says.

Kakashi freezes in the middle of standing up. Once Hizashi stops responding, he stops responding. This is unusual. "Yes?"

Hizashi fixes him with an agitated, fever-bright gaze. "You know he's meant for more. You're perfect with him. It's like you were specifically sent into my life to look after my little Neji."

"Uh," Kakashi says.

"I never knew why you liked me. Still not sure you do. Don't care. Doesn't matter. The greatest thing I've ever done as a father, is introduce my son to you."

"No," Kakashi says. "You've done loads for him, he loves you, and of course I like you."

All animation seems to drain out of Hizashi, and he goes back to staring out the window. He never really lost that caged bird fixation.

Deeply unsettled, Kakashi edges out into the main room.

Neji and his mother are standing there, the former with a small bag and the latter with an apologetic smile.

"I hate to impose," she says.

"No, it's fine," Kakashi says. "Really. I'm happy to help."

Neji huffs. "Why do you both say the same thing every time?"

"Silly grown-up thing," Kakashi says, ruffling his hair.

Neji hates looking untidy, and glares at him while he tries to smooth his hair back out.

His mother takes advantage of his distraction to swoop in and kiss him, which he also hates.

"I'll come pick you up from school tomorrow," she says, ignoring his protests. "We can eat together."

"I'm not a baby," he says.

"I'll still be there."

"…fine."

Kakashi pretends to be looking out the window when Neji gives his mother a quick hug, then walks out the door without looking back.

"Take care of him," she says, with a sad smile.

"I will. Don't forget to take care of yourself."

This is not the first time they've done this, and Neji leads the way to the Hokage residence and up to Kakashi and Gai's apartment. And Kakashi must have been truly rattled, because it's not until he opens the door and sees Gaara standing there that he remembers he's there.

"Uh," Kakashi says.

"Oh, Neji!" Gai says. "We just finished eating, but I can heat some up for you."

"Who's this?" Neji asks.

"This is Gaara," Kakashi says. "He lives here now."

"Did you come to play with me?" Gaara asks.

Neji looks at Kakashi.

"He's only a few months younger than you," Kakashi says.

There's a big difference between five and six, Neji's eyes say.

Gaara slouches in his seat. "No one wants to play with me."

Neji's good manners decide to make a rare appearance, and he marches over to Gaara's chair. "I'm Hyuuga Neji. My cousin's little like you, so I suppose we can play. But not tea parties, that's boring."

"I don't know how to play tea parties," Gaara says. "I don't know how to play anything. Sometimes Bull plays ball with me, but he's not here right now, and Bear isn't very good at it."

He runs over to where he's claimed one of the dog toys for himself, and rolls it across the floor to his mended teddy bear, where it of course stays.

Neji gives Kakashi a look of pure exasperation.

Then a little bit of sand appears, and the ball rolls back.

"Whoa," Neji says. "Did the bear really do that?"

Gaara looks at him like he's an idiot. "No, I did."

"With your chakra? I can't do that. Where'd the sand come from?"

Neji sits on the floor, and Gaara uses his sand to roll the ball to him, and Neji uses chakra bursts to try and roll it back, with mixed success.

Kakashi catches the ball before it hits him in the back of the head.

"Sorry," Neji says.

Gai even lets Neji eat on the floor, when normally he insists on eating at the table. Kakashi, who thinks any semi-flat surface is suitable for eating, particularly the couch, smirks at him.

It's late, if you're six, and Gaara seems to be trying to make up for a lifetime of missed sleep by dropping off around seven-thirty, so they don't play for long.

"Let's all sit on the couch and read a story," Kakashi says, when Gaara starts yawning.

Neji knows the routine, and Gaara is learning it, so they don't protest, climbing up beside Kakashi and hanging on his arms so he can't turn the pages and craning their necks looking at the pictures so he can't see.

Gai gives him a warm smile and turns the pages for him.

Kakashi decides to forego the Battle of the Bath for this evening, and tucks Gaara into bed. Neji follows, scrutinizing Gaara's room carefully, and Kakashi's every move.

"And here we are," Kakashi says, bringing Neji to his own room.

It isn't really Neji's room, of course; he has his own house and his own family, but he stays here often enough that it has some of his books, and a blanket he picked himself, and a picture of his family on the endtable. There are generic but clean clothes in the right sizes in his wardrobe.

"Your room is still here," Kakashi says.

"I wasn't worried about that," Neji says.

"Uh huh. You'll always have a place here, Neji. I meant to tell you about Gaara, but I, well, I forgot."

Neji rolls his eyes. "Of course you did."

Kakashi tucks him in.

"So what's this Gaara kid doing here?"

Kakashi sits down on the edge of the bed. "He lives here now."

"How come?"

"His family was very bad to him, so he came to live with me and Gai instead."

"So he's not going to go back? Not ever?"

"Not ever."

Neji plays with the blankets. "But my room will still be here?"

"Always." Kakashi smiles a little. "I'll always want you here, Neji. The only thing that's changed is you have a little brother to boss around."

"Hmm." Neji thinks about this. "Is a little brother better than a girl cousin?"

"I'm very happy with my little brother," Kakashi say. "And we never have tea parties."

"I guess that's okay then."

"I'm glad. I hope you two will be great friends someday."

"You said that about Naruto."

"Well, Naruto can be a little… overwhelming, sometimes. I'm sure he'll grow out of it. A bit."

Neji huffs. "Well maybe Gaara will be quieter."

"That, I can promise." Kakashi smooths his hair. "Goodnight, Neji."

"Goodnight."

Kakashi emerges to find Gai patiently waiting his turn to say goodnight.

"I can watch them for now," Gai says.

"Are you sure?"

"That I can watch two sleeping boys? I'm sure. Go ahead; I'll wait up for you."

Feeling like he's not pulling his weight around here, Kakashi shrugs apologetically and slinks away.

It's a short trip down the hall, across the courtyard, and through the sliding doors to sensei and Kushina's kitchen.

"H—" sensei says, before Kakashi hugs him.

"You know I love you, right?"

"Of course," sensei says, immediately hugging back.

"And you're okay? You're happy?"

"With you, with Naruto, with Mito, with Kushina, always."

"Right."

Kakashi doesn't let go.

"Did you come to tell me goodnight, Kakashi-nii?" Naruto asks.

Kakashi takes a deep breath and steps back. "Yes, of course I did. And I thought I would be late, since it's way past your bedtime, but look, here you are."

Naruto giggles. "Bedtime is boring."

"If you wake your sister up, you'll wish you were bored," Kushina says.

Naruto sighs dramatically, but slouches off to his room.

"Neji staying with you again?" Kushina asks.

"Yeah. Gaara's got him playing with the dog toys, now, too. I need to find something else for them to do."

"Not fingerpainting," Kushina says darkly.

Sensei winces.

Kakashi's definitely going to get this story out of Naruto later.

"I just wish I knew what to say," Kakashi says.

"Sometimes there's nothing you can say," sensei says. "You're a good friend, and you're way beyond helpful, opening your home and trekking all the way across the village to visit them."

"I haven't been," Kakashi confesses.

Sensei gives him a gentle shake, like he used to when Kakashi was little and being dumb. "You are in no way responsible for Hizashi's problems. He is a grown man, with a wife and people who care about him, and his well-being does not hinge on whether or not you visit him."

"I should have gone."

"You've been busy. You just got back from a mission—a much more dangerous mission than the one you described to me, by the way, which I haven't forgotten—and now you and Gai are parents. You're allowed to have your own life."

Kakashi sighs. "I guess."

"You don't have to take care of the whole village, Kakashi."

Which is fortunate, because he can barely cope with the tiny corner of it he already does.

Sensei sighs. "You want to sit with us for a bit? I can make snacks."

Kakashi smiles at him fondly. "No, it's fine. I just had to, you know, make sure nothing had happened to you since this morning. I left Gai with the kids."

Sensei opens his mouth.

"And yes, I'll mention this to my therapist tomorrow."

"Well. Good."

"Is it safe to approach?" Kushina asks.

They both startle, and she laughs and crushes them both in a Kushina-hug.

Kakashi slips into his own bed, at eight thirty because he is pathetic and can no longer stay up late, and Gai wraps an arm around him, anchoring him.

"Should I have given you more time to decide if you wanted to be a parent?" Kakashi asks.

"I was sure you were going to secretly adopt Neji," Gai says, already yawning now that he's kept his promise to wait up. "I'd thought about it."

It's not really an answer.

* * *

"I want to talk about Hizashi," Kakashi says.

His therapist, the same one he's been seeing for… almost fifteen years now, maybe he should get him a cookie or something. Fifteen cookies?

Kakashi's lost his train of thought, and he's being addressed. "What?"

"I said, you seem like you have something you want to talk about."

"Yes," Kakashi says, over-patiently. "Hizashi. Like I said."

His therapist gives him the 'don't bullshit me' look he's honed over the years.

"I told you he's depressed," Kakashi says.

"No, I told you that. But you did describe the symptoms."

"And he's not doing well right now and Neji is staying with me again."

"And how does that make you feel?"

Kakashi rolls his eyes. "Like it's massively triggering, of course. It sounds like he's spent the last few days staring out the window and questioning his value as a parent. But Neji's with me and fine, and his wife is with him and he's… there, if not exactly fine, and I went and told sensei about it and then checked on him five times already today and _he's_ fine, so everything's fine."

"I see."

" _But_ I feel like I should be doing more to help him," Kakashi says. "Hizashi, I mean. Do you have any ideas?"

"Not since the last time you asked. Many people struggle with depression throughout their lives."

This is not what Kakashi wants to hear. "But-"

"This is also his struggle, not yours. You can be a supportive friend, but not if you allow yourself to get too involved and jeopardize your own recovery."

Kakashi sighs. He's heard this all before.

"No matter how many times you ask me, I'll still give you the same answers."

Kakashi doesn't know why he keeps coming here. Back when he first got on a proper team, Orochimaru was surprised when he told him that he would be late to morning practice twice a week. Apparently it was no longer mandatory to attend after he got re-certified, but… he kept going anyway.

Mostly they stare at each other a lot, or rehash the same conversations over and over, so maybe it's sort of a break for his therapist.

"What do you get out of this?" Kakashi asks, suddenly curious.

"What?"

"You've known me for the majority of my life. That's a long time."

He sits back. "It's my job," he says. "And it's a genuine pleasure for me to see you doing so well."

Kakashi flushes. "Uhh…"

"Really. Look at how far you've come. You have a large, loving family, and now you're trying to share that with the next generation by raising your own children."

Kakashi looks at the floor. "Maybe something else is bothering me. In addition to that. Because that was also bothering me."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Kakashi scowls. "Why would I be bringing it up if I didn't?"

He gets a neutral face back.

"People are starting to wonder about me and Gai again."

"You mentioned before that it unsettles you when people assume you're together romantically."

Unsettled. Right. "Mmhmm."

"Has someone said something to you?"

"No. But I know they're thinking it."

"Why is that?"

Therapy, also known as fifteen years of pure aggravation. "Because it's obvious. We moved in together, which is typical for a young couple, which is why there was all that initial confusion that we were together. But it isn't unusual for close friends who are just beginning their careers to be in a platonic roommate situation, and most people eventually accepted that. Well, most people who matter."

"Okay."

"But now we have a child together. That isn't something platonic roommates do."

"I don't see why not."

"I'm not totally hopeless; I understand how relationships work. Certain behaviors belong in certain categories, and categorizing the relationship is essential to ensuring that everyone understand what's expected of them. I'm sure I've mentioned this before."

"Hmm. Why don't you remind me?"

Kakashi dearly wants to huff in annoyance, but Gaara made that exact noise last night when ordered to bathe, so probably he shouldn't, being a somewhat functional adult and all. "I'm sure you have pages of notes on this somewhere. Gai and I are roommates; roommates do not have a child together. Therefore, our relationship has drastically changed, or I've been misinterpreting it this whole time." He grimaces. "Could go either way, really."

"Is it so important that Gai fit into this category?"

"Yes! He's not family the way sensei and Kushina are, and he's not a friend like Anko or Hizashi, he's… he's Gai."

"A category of Gai?"

"Yes. No. I need to do better than that. There are no rules for the Gai category, so how can I know what kind of touching is okay? If you're not clear about the rules, you might accidentally make a sexual overture."

"Has that happened to you before?"

Time has dulled many of Kakashi's memories from his first life, but he still remembers the intense confusion of being a teenager and then a young man in ANBU, trying desperately to sort out what was comradely behavior and what was a come-on. He finally developed a reputation as someone who disdained human contact, which wasn't ideal but he managed.

"Kakashi?"

But nothing like that has happened here, because he knows better now. He shrugs. "Not really."

"Hmm."

Kakashi bites back another aggravated sigh. "I'm not worried that I'll be unable to provide for a child," he says, which is not something he ever could have imagined himself saying. "I have sensei and Kushina's example, and they're by the apartment at least once a day anyway. And there's Naruto and Mito and Neji."

"You don't need to convince me. You've always done well with the children."

This is a horrible, blatant falsehood, not even considering the clusterfuck of Kakashi's Team Seven. He must have been in this office every day of Kushina's pregnancy, and spent Naruto's entire first year oscillating between panic and… more panic. He's lucky he was still in medical training at the time and couldn't be fired.

"You don't think so?"

Team Seven, Kakashi thinks. But he tries not to lie to his therapist, when he can avoid it, so he refocuses on the subject at hand. "I think we're making real progress with Gaara. It's how his presence affects Gai and me that I'm worried about." He blinks. "Is that selfish? An inappropriate concern?"

"Not at all. Children always have an impact on a relationship."

That makes sense. "The thing is, especially with a child in the picture, Gai and me… it's looking more and more like a, you know. Intimate sort of… boyfriend thing."

"Have you tried talking to him about it?"

"No."

"Have you considered trying to talk to him about it?"

"No."

Silence reigns. It feels like disapproving silence.

Kakashi tries not to fidget.

"Has Gai every given you any sign that he wouldn't be open to talking?"

"No. He's always talking."

"Do you think he would push you into something you didn't want?"

"How could he?" Kakashi asks. "He's one of the most important people in my life. If there's something he wants from our relationship that I've been too stupid to pick up on, I'm not some kind of leech who doesn't understand reciprocity. Once it's explained to me in small enough words, anyway."

His therapist frowns very slightly. "You mean, if it is a, er, 'intimate sort of boyfriend thing' but you hadn't realized."

"Exactly."

"In the entire time that I've known you, you've never shown the slightest interest in any sort of sexual relationship, with anyone."

"I'm sure it can't be that unpleasant, if so many people have them."

"I see."

Kakashi winces. He knows that tone. He knows that look. He's said something bad again.

He really, truly doesn't miss the days when he was alone in the world. But social interaction was a lot easier when everyone he cared about was dead. This is going to be the incident of counting hugs all over again, he can tell.

"Should I ask Gai to come by?" he asks, resigned. It probably doesn't say anything good about him that his best friend/roommate/eternal rival/possible boyfriend is on a first-name basis with his therapist.

His therapist doesn't immediately say yes, which is a surprise. "If you think you need to," he says finally. "But if you'd like, you and Gai can try and talk this out yourselves. I haven't done anything more than provide a room for years now; I think you can do this."

Except that will involve actually talking to Gai.

Kakashi sighs. Heavily. "All right."


	4. Chapter 4

Notes: Well, this is it. It's hard to believe that this is the end. Thank you to everyone for reading, reviewing, favoriting, following, it's awesome that people are reading and liking this series.

* * *

Neji stays the whole week, so he tries to be home as often as possible, because he enjoys spending time with Neji and also to give whoever's watching him and Gaara a break.

Gaara, for all Kakashi's initial fears of violence, has slotted easily into their lives. Of course, he and Gai are both elite ninja, and accustomed to a certain amount of violence, but Gaara is (perhaps unsurprisingly) very self-contained. He'll play quietly for hours with the dogs so long as whoever is minding him occasionally looks up and smiles or otherwise shows him some tiny bit of positive attention.

It's actually rather depressing, and both Kakashi and Gai make a point of including Gaara as much as possible, drafting him to help with household chores or consulting him on tough research questions or just all playing together. They've started some very basic training, but Gaara is used to being treated as a weapon and nothing else, and they're keeping it simple in hopes of giving him a positive association with training.

That was sensei's idea.

But overall, Gaara is a surprisingly easy child to care for.

Neji is not.

In his own way, he is as demanding as Naruto. He wants to train. He wants to talk. He wants to help cook, clean, write reports, whatever the adult is doing. He wants to tell everyone about his homework, his classes, his classmates, his thoughts.

He can't be left alone for five minutes, even if he allowed it, because he will get into absolutely everything. Kakashi hadn't known a refrigerator _could_ blow up.

After his initial uncertainty, Neji quickly found a new favorite activity: bossing Gaara around. Kakashi had been sure this would end in sand and tears, but Gaara revels in the attention, and it's more of a challenge keeping Gaara from being _in_ danger just because Neji told him to do something ridiculous than to keep Gaara from being _a_ danger.

So, supervised activities. Kakashi teaches them both some of the basics of throwing weapons, which Neji had previously disdained. He takes them out to one of the training fields with a basic ropes course where they have great fun rolling in the mud. He ruins a saucepan trying to cook, and Gaara puts out the fire. He even attempts to play Candyland with them, out of some fit of temporary insanity.

At least the boys seem to get along. Kakashi was a little worried by how intensely Neji and Naruto disliked each other, even though Kushina said it was perfectly normal behavior for kids their age. Gaara is generally willing to go along with whatever Neji wants to do, and if he isn't Neji can be convinced that he actually wanted to do something different.

But eventually Hizashi and his wife come for dinner and take Neji back with them, and Gaara is deemed stable enough to have supervised playdates with Naruto, and Kakashi is out of distractions.

He still waits for the third playdate, just in case there's some crisis that sensei and Kushina couldn't handle together.

"So," Kakashi says, desperately uncomfortable and trying not to be totally obvious about it. "Gaara seems to be doing well."

"Yes! We will have to have Neji over more often."

"Right. Everything seems to be working out, then."

Gai gives him a look.

Kakashi groans and drops into a chair, reaching for the closest book—there's always on in arm's reach, he can't keep himself from bringing research home—and opens it to a random page, holding it in front of his face. "Old habits die hard," he says, even though he knows that won't make any sense to Gai.

Gai sits down as well, not all the way across the table, but not right next to him, either.

Kakashi has no idea what he's ever done to deserve this man.

"Something is troubling you?" Gai asks.

Kakashi tugs on his hair and tries to hide his whole self behind the book. "I know this is horrible timing." He stops. Laughs, a little painfully. "What I mean is, I'm late. I guess I got lost on the road of life."

Gai kind of blinks at him in an encouraging way.

It's probably not too late to drag Gai to therapy with him. Kakashi doesn't need anyone to tell him that he's too inept to have a personal conversation without third-party intervention, it's painfully obvious. "I'm concerned that I didn't talk to you about Gaara in advance."

"You couldn't have known Suna would just hand over their Jinchuuriki to a foreign power."

"…right."

Gai narrows his eyes suspiciously.

Kakashi wants to smack himself. He lies for a living, that is his actual profession, supposedly an elite ninja, and then there's this conversation. "Well," he says. "Of course I didn't _know_. And the adoption thing was definitely a surprise."

Gai takes a moment to process this. "Well. That." He shakes his head. "Kakashi, I've seen you with Naruto and little Mito. Neji has his own room in our house. We've been parenting for years. Would it have been a good idea to talk about Gaara in advance? Yes. But I know my own mind, and as I said, I've been expecting us to adopt at some point, and I was surprised but accepting of Gaara's appearance in our lives."

There's this thing about Gai where he always knows exactly what he feels and always says exactly what he means to. Kakashi is deeply envious of this skill.

"But…" Gai prompts.

"So…" Kakashi waits for someone to attack or some crisis to occur. The universe, perversely, refuses to deliver. "Do you want to… get married, then?"

Gai looks completely shocked.

And now Kakashi really, really wants to just sink into the floor and disappear. So, obviously they weren't even close to the same page, if Gai is that surprised. He has a sudden intense desire to be having this conversation with Orochimaru, who of all the people in Konoha seems to understand him best, and then is totally horrified when he realizes that he just considered asking Orochimaru to marry him.

"Do you?" Gai asks, after a few excruciating minutes.

"Do you?" Kakashi echoes. This isn't going to get them anywhere. "I mean, if you do."

Gai bites his lip, obviously thinking hard.

Kakashi taps his feet and shreds his shirt cuffs and tries not to bolt.

"This isn't about Gaara," Gai eventually concludes.

Kakashi thought that part was obvious but doesn't want to open his mouth because _who knows what he might say._

But Gai seems to have finished his thought, and is waiting patiently for Kakashi to elaborate.

Damn. "Now that Gaara is here, it reminds me that you don't date," Kakashi says, slowly, so he can hopefully catch anything stupid before he actually says it. Except that sounds like Gai is lacking in some way. "That _we_ don't date." Wait. "Other people. Or each other, I guess."

"You've met someone you want to date?" Gai asks.

"No!" Kakashi half-shouts, way too loud for a private conversation between two people sitting right next to each other. "I mean, no, that's not what I meant." He takes a few deep breaths, grits his teeth, then finally just asks the question he actually wants to ask. "I meant… is that a problem for you? It's been a few years, and you can bring people by, if you want. I told you that before, didn't I?"

"You did," Gai says. "But I don't want to share our home with anyone but you."

Kakashi freezes up.

"Well, and Gaara," Gai amends. "And Neji, of course. And your sensei and his family. Oh, and the dogs. I guess that's quite a lot of people, actually."

"But," Kakashi says, and kind of flails a bit. "What?"

"Is that not what you want?" Gai asks, and starts to look really, incredibly sad, which is the complete opposite of everything that Kakashi wants. "Are you unhappy?"

"No! Yes!" Kakashi gets up so fast he knocks his chair over, but he's standing anyway so it's fine. "Whichever one means that I'm happy. Because I am. I just thought _you_ were unhappy. I know that I'm… strange, and difficult to be around, and live with, and—"

"Ah," Gai interrupts, face clearing right up. "Don't worry; I am very happy. I had hoped… I _do_ hope to spend the rest of our lives together."

Kakashi's whole body is paralyzed with shock. He doesn't even think he's breathing.

"Too much?" Gai asks, sounding uncharacteristically uncertain.

"No!" Kakashi shouts, way too loud for the small room. Again. But that's just… as if there were any possibility in any universe where he wouldn't want Gai in his life. "Everything is perfect. I was… possibly overthinking things."

Gai gives him that look that seems to look straight into his soul. "You know, dating is basically just going out and doing things together. It's not that different from anything we already do."

Kakashi frowns. Even he couldn't have misinterpreted Jiraiya's stories all this time. "But… there's no sex at the end?"

"Not a requirement," Gai says easily, like this doesn't _fundamentally shatter_ Kakashi's entire perception of the world. Or at least his and Gai's small corner of it.

"…oh," Kakashi says lamely, trying to process.

"And whether or not we choose to call what we're doing 'dating' doesn't matter," Gai says. "This is the life we've chosen for ourselves."

"Huh."

Gai reaches out and takes his hand, and when Kakashi does nothing but stare he pulls him easily to his feet and into a hug. "You worry too much," Gai says, not unkindly. "I'm happy, you're happy, Gaara's happy. We have a strong, happy family here."

Kakashi returns the embrace, for once without worrying about whether he's stepping over some kind of line. Gai is warm and solid and always there, always a certainty. "Yeah, okay," he says. "You're right."

The door bangs open.

"Sorry to interrupt," sensei says, looking genuinely apologetic.

"It's _dinnertime_ ," Naruto says, sighing dramatically. "I've been waiting _forever._ "

Kakashi smiles into Gai's shoulder.

"I can keep bring him up after dinner," sensei says, fighting a losing battle to discreetly herd Naruto back out of the room.

Then Kakashi feels himself sliding backwards, sees the same thing happening to Gai, and once the sand has pulled them apart Gaara plants himself in between them. He's got a strange combination of irritation and uncertainty on his face.

"Hello, Gaara," Gai says, picking him up and hugging him.

How does Gai always know what to do? Kakashi wonders, then hugs them both.

"And me!" Naruto shouts, catapulting into the back of Kakashi's legs.

"Dinner sounds good," Kakashi says, scooping Naruto up in his free arm. He should hug them more often.

"You're just tired of eating your own cooking," sensei teases, ruffling Kakashi's hair as he goes by.

"He always burns things," Gaara says. "We have to go out for food."

"Yes, thank you," Kakashi says, while Gai laughs at him.

Kushina is just finishing setting out the food when they arrive, and even though there are plenty of chairs Kakashi somehow ends up with Gaara on one leg and Naruto on the other.

Naruto's on the same side as Mito's high chair, and he enthusiastically "helps" feed her in between bites of his own meal.

Kakashi tries not to sigh as Mito drops something goopy on his leg.

Sensei is giving him a ridiculously soppy smile from the other side of the table, which Kakashi doesn't feel is really warranted.

Gaara still eats with a single-minded determination that says all that really needs to be said about his early childhood, but every once in a while he'll peer out from behind his hair, like he thinks Kakashi might creep away even when he's sitting on top of him.

Yeah, Kakashi definitely needs to hug him more. He really should have thought of that sooner.

From his non-baby side, Gai leans in to nudge his shoulder and give him a thumbs up.

Kakashi relaxes a little. Maybe he's floundering a bit, but Gai is here, and he's not going anywhere. They can do this. Together.

* * *

Kakashi hasn't even sat down yet when his therapist asks, "So, have you talked to Gai?"

Kakashi rolls his eyes. He feels so light now, like he's barely touching the ground. He hopes it lasts, even if it's probably written all over his face. "What do you think?"

Because he's a good therapist, he doesn't look too unbearably pleased with himself.

* * *

A few weeks later, Mito gets a cold, nothing serious, but she is up and crying at all hours, and a grouchy, sleep-deprived Naruto is not making life easier on his parents.

"We could have a sleepover?" Kakashi asks. "That's a thing people do, right?"

Sensei seizes on this like a desperate man.

Naruto tells the whole world about it, and Neji wants to know why he doesn't get to have a sleepover, and so does Sasuke, and Kakashi definitely doesn't say yes but somehow he still ends up responsible for four children.

"This is on you," he tells Gai.

Gaara gets really excited about showing everyone around 'his' house, and between Kakashi, Gai, and seven ninken they keep the destruction relatively contained.

Naruto loudly insists that they have to get takeout, because Kakashi is the worst cook ever.

"That is not true," Kakashi says, indignant. "You should have seen sensei when he was young. I did all the cooking for us."

Naruto scrunches up his face. "No, I don't think so."

"You aren't going to win this one," Gai says, not even pretending to be sympathetic.

Kakashi sighs and orders takeout.

Gaara is inspired to be less terrible than usual at bathtime, and Kakashi is tentatively counting his blessings when he finds Sasuke hiding in the hallway sniffling.

"What's the matter?" Kakashi asks, sitting on the floor next to Sasuke.

"'m not crying," Sasuke says.

"Okay. But if you _were_ crying, why would you want to?"

Sasuke gives him a suspicious, watery look. "It's my first sleepover."

"Okay?"

"I- I miss…"

His mom? His dad?

"…Itachi!"

Of course. "I'm sure he can come say goodnight to you," Kakashi says.

"R-really?"

"Sure. I'll just send him a note." Kakashi races through the familiar signs of the Kuchiyose no Jutsu.

"No more kids," Pakkun says, looking at the tears and snot in mild horror. "Never again."

"You are a fierce ninja hound," Kakashi says.

Pakkun looks like he's about to dismiss himself.

"Just a message," Kakashi says hurriedly. "And I suppose Itachi is still a kid, but he won't chase you."

Sasuke giggles at the idea.

Kakashi hunts around for something to write with.

"I can take a verbal message," Pakkun says patiently.

"Right. Just tell him we need him for goodnights."

Pakkun looks like he very much wants to say something cutting, but he won't in front of Sasuke. He does manage to hop out with the window with a lot of attitude, though.

"There we go," Kakashi says. "Now let's go wash your face and you can join the fight over the blankets."

The choosing of the blankets occupies almost twenty minutes, so four hyper five and six year olds are only just starting to settle when Itachi arrives.

The whole lot of them are snuggled up on a pile of couch cushions and folded futons in the middle of the living room, because they couldn't agree on who got to share which rooms.

Kakashi is never doing this again.

Sasuke gives everyone a fierce look, daring them to say something about his brother coming, but no one does.

"Hug," Naruto orders.

Kakashi complies, reminded again how much better the world is now. The Naruto he used to know would never have demanded a hug, even when he needed one. Maybe especially when he needed one. "Goodnight, Naruto."

"'Night," Naruto says. "Love you."

"I love you, too," Kakashi says, the same bedtime routine sensei used on him for years. It got easier with practice.

Across the room, Itachi is doing the same for Sasuke.

"Me too?" Gaara asks, still uncertain after weeks of living with them. Gai is hopeful that he'll grow out of it, but Kakashi isn't too sure. He didn't.

Kakashi reaches out and gathers him in a hug with his free arm. "Goodnight, Gaara. I love you, too."

Neji is fidgeting with his blanket.

Kakashi doesn't have any more arms, so he drops back onto Neij's portion of the cushion, taking Naruto and Gaara with him. He doesn't hug Neji so much as gently fall on him, but the thought is there. "And I love you, too."

Gaara wiggles out from under Kakashi's arm and kisses Neji's forehead. "Night, love you." He turns to do the same to Naruto.

"And me," Sasuke demands, not wanting to be left out. "And Itachi-niisan."

"Um," Itachi says.

Gai swoops in and includes him in the impromptu group hug, and Itachi doesn't really protest too much.

"Love you," Gai says, privately to Kakashi.

"You too," Kakashi says.

Okay. Maybe they could do this again.

* * *

"What are you working on?" Kakashi asks, draping himself over the back of the couch and nudging Gai's shoulder with his head. "You've been very busy lately."

"It's hard to see with your hair in my face," Gai says.

Kakashi responds by pretending to fall and knocking them both off the couch in a tangle of limbs.

"You are like a cat."

"I am nothing like a cat!" Kakashi says, stretching and congratulating himself on a task well-disrupted.

"You only think that because you've never seen a cat."

"Nor am I likely to," Kakashi says. "I think this household has been claimed for the dogs."

"Then you haven't been talking to Naruto," Gai says.

Kakashi pictures it. "The poor cat."

"I wouldn't worry about it, your sensei's said no."

Kakashi arches his back so he can look at Gai upside-down.

"And Kushina's put her foot down."

So there probably won't be a cat, then. "He has Gaara," Kakashi says. "And Gaara has the Shukaku. It's sort of like a cat."

Gai blinks at him.

"Well they're both mammals, anyway."

"I really don't understand your thought process sometimes," Gai says, with an affectionate shoulder bump.

"It's a mystery to us all," Kakashi says. He rights himself, then puts his feet up on the table. "But seriously. What gives? You're not applying for ANBU, are you?"

Gai gives him a look of total disbelief. "What?"

"Okay, maybe not."

Gai actually looks sort of uncomfortable, which might be a first.

"What's wrong?" Kakashi asks, serious. "It may not seem like it, but I do know that I don't have a monopoly on personal issues in this relationship."

Gai chuckles. "I know. And it's not a personal issue, well, not really. Maybe."

"Okay."

"You remember I wanted to be a jounin-sensei?"

Kakashi's feet thunk against the floor. "Wanted? Past tense?"

Gai looks shifty. "When I went in for my interview, they said that they usually prefer jounin with more experience. You know I only got promoted last year."

Kakashi jumps to his feet. "That's such bullshit. You are an exemplary jounin, brilliant with kids, you would be a perfect sensei."

Gai flushes. "You really think so?"

"Obviously! I'll go tell them right now!"

"Ah, please don't," Gai says. "I've been shuffled to the bottom of the pile, but they haven't set my application on fire or anything. Yet."

"Are you sure?" Kakashi asks, still poised to run. "Because I will track down the whole committee."

"Yes. I know."

Kakashi, very reluctantly, sits down on the couch. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

Gai shuffles through his papers. "They talk about experience, but lots of jounin get students in the first year or two after their promotion."

"Like sensei," Kakashi says.

"No one is like your sensei. But other people, yes. I think they're looking on my length of service as a chuunin unfavorably."

Not helped by Kakashi's insistence that he not learn a unique skill like the Eight Gates.

"So I thought, if I could show that I was working on something important, they would be more understanding." Gai sighs. "But I'm not getting anywhere."

Taking this as permission, Kakashi peers at the papers. At first, they look a bit like their early attempts at teaching Gaara to write, but if he squints a little he can see how they might be jutsu diagrams. "That's a good idea," he says.

"Except that I have no idea how you do it," Gai says ruefully. "It's gotten to the point where R&D stops me in the street to make sure you're feeling well if you've gone a whole month without creating something."

"No," Kakashi says. "That's not… really?"

Gai climbs up on the couch so he can drop a kiss on Kakashi's forehead. "Really. All part of the life of the more easily accessible half of the smartest man in Konoha."

Kakashi ducks, face flaming.

Gai gathers all the papers together and turns them decisively facedown. "I will find another way."

"Can I… help?" Kakashi asks. He's never had any success explaining his ideas to anyone but sensei and, oddly, Neji, but he's certainly willing to try.

"I will make my own way," Gai says, not unkindly. "And I've already been asked, twice, whether you're thinking about applying, so better not to confuse the issue."

Kakashi snorts. "If they think I'd make a better jounin-sensei than you, then they need to seriously reconsider their standards. Do you remember when Neji broke his nose?"

Gai shakes his head. "He didn't start panicking until you did, because he knows you're a medic. And it wasn't even broken, just bloody."

"Which just proves my point. I fixate on ridiculous things, like whether sensei had a fatal accident on the way to the breakfast table. I am the first to fall apart in a crisis. I have to be led by the hand through the most basic social interaction."

"You did kill Uchiha Madara that one time."

"Yes, because it's so impressive to detach an old man too frail to even stand from his life support. Definitely one of my more impressive moments."

Gai snickers. "That's not how that story got recorded in the history books."

"I'm in the book again!?"

"I think you're selling yourself short," Gai says. "You're doing great things for this village."

"In a role where I never leave the village, and primarily conduct research. No, I do fine in this role, but back out in the field I'll—"

"Steal a Jinchuuriki from under the Kazekage's nose?"

"…that was an isolated incident."

Gai laughs and messes up Kakashi's hair. "I understand your point. You don't want to be a jounin-sensei, and you don't think it suits your skillset."

"But it does suit yours," Kakashi says. "That was my actual point."

"I may still be chosen," Gai says. "And if not, I will try again next year. I fought to graduate from the Academy, and I fought for my promotion to jounin, and I will fight for this, as well."

"Good," Kakashi says. "And I'll support you. Oh, here's a thought. You can't be the only Academy student who wanted to specialize in taijutsu. Maybe you should put together some kind of protocol for that. Or just a bunch of advice for future kids who are in your position."

"I like that idea," Gai says. "I can call it _The Flames of Youth_."

Lee will probably love that.

* * *

Konoha summer is nothing compared to Suna, but then, Kakashi isn't from Suna.

"It's hot," he says, firmly. "We're going to the river."

"No," Gaara says, just as firmly.

"You don't have to go in the water," Kakashi says. "You don't even have to look at the water. You just have to be somewhat closer to it than you are now."

Gai laughs, and continues packing food in the basket and not helping.

"Neji will be there," Kakashi says. "And Naruto and Sasuke and Sakura. All your friends."

"I will go," Gaara says, after several long minutes of thinking.

Kakashi decides to take what he can get, and not insist on the swim trunks. He also takes the basket, and tries to stare Gai into silence. It doesn't work, and he gets laughed at the whole way to the river.

Everyone else is already there, probably because they didn't have to force their kid out the door.

Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura are in the river, playing a ball game that seems to primarily involve splashing and giggling. Kushina is also in the water, ostensibly helping Mito paddle around but mostly using chakra to periodically drench the gigglers.

Kakashi is happy to see it. Sakura was so quiet and shy when he first tracked her down, he'd worried that he'd inadvertently created some kind of childhood trauma for her, or just failed to notice the one she'd always had.

But now she's more like the Sakura he remembers, except that she's dunking Sasuke and Naruto with equal abandon. Which is only for the better, in his mind.

Sensei is sitting in the grown-up section under a tree, chatting with Hizashi and his wife and trying to stuff them with food. Neji is also there, industriously picking grass.

Kakashi and Gai look at each other.

Gai makes it to the water first, belly-flopping spectacularly and splashing everyone. Kakashi blames it on having to drop the picnic basket. He dunks Gai twice in retaliation, then swims back to shore to where Gaara is waiting, as far from the water as he can get without leaving the clearing.

"Let's go see Neji," Kakashi says, resisting the urge to shake water on Gaara.

Neji looks adorable in his bright blue swim trunks. "Hey, Gaara," he says. "Are you still afraid of the water?"

"I'm not afraid," Gaara says. "I just don't like it."

"Okay," Neji says tolerantly. "Well I brought another ball, so we can just play out here."

Kakashi is hoping that with enough exposure to games at the river, Gaara will start associating water with fun. But he also doesn't want to push him, or make him feel excluded. "Can I play, too?"

"We can play fetch," Gaara decides.

Hizashi chuckles.

None of Kakashi's efforts to explain that fetch isn't a human game have stuck. "That's not really—"

Gaara throws the ball as far as he can. "Well?"

Kakashi sighs. He's probably going to regret this.

He doesn't, but he does get quite a workout. There's a waterfall just upstream that makes this an ideal swimming spot, and the boys quickly hit on the idea of throwing the ball over the waterfall and making Kakashi run up to get it. It would be much easier to climb the rocks, but of course not as interesting.

Neither of them is quite strong enough to throw it so far on their own, but Gaara is good at using his sand to enhance his power, even if he can't use it as easily so close to the spray.

Then sensei decides to stop pretending to be an adult and gets involved.

"Really?" Kakashi asks, when the man teleports it into a tree.

Neji wants to fetch now, and Kakashi takes his hands and 'helps' him walk up the tree. Then Gaara wants to try it.

With a wink, sensei tosses the ball right between two rocks at the top of the waterfall.

"Now me!" Neji says.

This is actually a bit of a challenge, but Kakashi helps him up the waterfall, and they jump back down into the deep part of the river.

When they surface again, there's the ball in the same spot.

Kakashi raises an eyebrow at Gaara.

He scowls, but shrugs out of his shirt and shoes and holds his arms out imperiously.

Kakashi helps him up, too, and refrains from laughing every time Gaara gets hit with the spray and sputters like an angry cat. And because he did such a good job, Kakashi lands on the water instead of in it when they go down.

"Nice work you two," sensei says.

"And me!" Neji says.

"And you. Now, who's hungry?"

* * *

Kakashi doesn't get many official summons to the Hokage's office. Well, not anymore. The Sandaime seemed to think he couldn't be left alone for a moment, in both his lives, and Tsunade just enjoyed embarrassing him with old stories.

But Orochimaru, he claims to have seen more than enough of Kakashi as a student, and that disaster always follows in his wake.

Which just isn't true.

Not _always_.

So it isn't without a certain degree of trepidation that Kakashi makes his way to the Hokage Tower.

"Go right in," the chuunin secretary says.

Orochimaru's desk is messier than Kakashi has ever seen it, though it's not quite reaching Tsunade levels of clutter.

"I'm not helping with that," Kakashi says.

"You would be the last person I asked."

Kakashi thinks about that. "Really? The absolute last?"

"Jiraiya isn't here."

Kakashi laughs. "Has there been a decision about Gaara?"

The Elder Council can't make up their minds whether the benefits of indoctrinating a former Suna shinobi in the Konoha way through its educational system outweigh the danger to the other students from the "unstable, rogue" Jinchuuriki. Well, they still have a few more years before Gaara is too old to start at the Academy.

Hopefully that will be enough.

"No," Orochimaru says.

Kakashi shrugs. He wasn't really expecting they had, but that's his only idea for why he's here.

"I'll get straight to the point," Orochimaru says.

That's a good summary of his philosophy as Hokage, so Kakashi isn't surprised.

"I've decided to retire."

Kakashi blinks. "I… didn't realize you'd decided to take the job in the first place."

"Don't remind me," Orochimaru says, darkly. "But that woman has been rampaging around my office for years now, and if she actually wants the job, more fool her."

"You haven't told her yet," Kakashi says. It wasn't a question; the whole village, possibly the whole of Fire Country, would have heard if Kushina knew that Orochimaru was finally ceding the title to her.

"I have not."

Kakashi has a moment of sheer panic. "You're not naming me Hokage, are you?"

"I don't think that would necessarily be a bad choice, but no."

Kakashi starts breathing again. "So why tell me first?"

Orochimaru folds his hands and looks at Kakashi. "Do you know where the name 'the Legendary Sannin' originated?"

Kakashi doesn't see how this is relevant, but, "No. I don't think it ever came up."

"It was during the Second Shinobi World War. The fighting had spilled into Amegakure, and the Great Nations, we didn't think of it as any more than a fighting ground. But their leader, Hanzou… he didn't accept that. He fought back fiercely, slaughtered ninja on both sides, until only Jiraiya, Tsunade and I remained. Our determination to survive impressed him, and he spared out lives in exchange for accepting the title of the Legendary Sannin."

Kakashi can't help his involuntary twitch at hearing of Amegakure, but he doesn't think Orochimaru notices, too caught up in his story.

"He was an extraordinary ninja, and a dreadful tyrant," Orochimaru says. "He once aspired to conquer the whole world, and bring about peace under his banner."

What is it about Amegakure that inspires dreams of world domination?

"There is a man I always thought would die with a sword in his hand, covered in the blood of his enemies."

"And… he's been killed?" Kakashi asks, when the silence stretches.

"He has not. He has… stepped down. There's an organization of war orphans in Ame, and they've been suing for peace. With words, not force of arms. They're calling themselves 'the Akatsuki.'"

This time, Kakashi knows he doesn't hide his shock.

"It is hard to believe," Orochimaru says. "But they seem sincere. The leaders are former students of Jiraiya's, and Hanzou sent me a personal note. He calls them 'repayment for the favor of sparing Jiraiya' that day. He wants me to consider receiving their ambassadors."

Is… is this Pein? The premature end of the Third Shinobi World War, the death of Danzou and Madara… has that somehow defeated the militant version of Akatsuki before it could even begin?

"The world is changing," Orochimaru says. "There is no place in it for leaders like me. Kushina has been nattering nonstop about reaching out to the other Jinchuuriki, and I have no doubt that she'll be thrilled about this Akatsuki."

Keeping the Kyuubi from Akatsuki is such a reflex, Kakashi knows he'll have to meditate on this. And investigate this new Akatsuki. Thoroughly.

"This new era of peace, looming on the horizon… that is a job for the next generation."

Kakashi… has no idea what to say. Or think. "What will you do?"

"Jiraiya wants to find Tsunade. He thinks she's more likely to listen to him if I'm there." Orochimaru scoffs. "Isn't that the job of the old? To reach backward, into the past?"

"Well," Kakashi says. "You weren't nearly as bad a Hokage as most people thought you would be."

"You are such an odd child. I think I shall take that as high praise."

Kakashi shrugs.

"It's a strange new world that you and your children will live in," Orochimaru says. "But it looks like a brighter one."

"Yeah," Kakashi says. "So it does."


End file.
